


Too Late to Apologise

by Callaeidae3



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Character Death, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Missions Gone Wrong, Suspense, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-05 03:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15161915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callaeidae3/pseuds/Callaeidae3
Summary: Keith's sick and Lance realises too late that he should've said something. A Blade mission doesn't go as planned, Keith is caught by the Commander of the base he's meant to be infiltrating and he doesn't return.But what if Lance could go back in time and change that?(An alternate reality/canon divergence of S4E1: Code of Honour.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea how to tag this. This takes place towards the end of Season 4, Episode 1: Code of Honour (i.e., after Regris). There's klance if you squint (since canon appears to be heading that way)... just - here's some feels!!!!!!! :O
> 
> 05/07: I have [at least] another couple of chapters in mind for this, along the lines of 僕だけがいない街/Erased...

The contraption looks like a hunter’s trap for an animal’s foot, but when the Galra soldier standing behind him grabs a fistful of his hair and yanks his head back, Keith knows it’s not going to be clamped around his ankle.

Panic sets in and he gasps, twisting and wrestling in the soldier’s grip. The Commander fumbles with the contraption, making sure it’s orientated correctly. She steps forward, bending over her prisoner. Keith’s eyes widen in terror. _No._ The contraption – a muzzle – is shoved down on the bridge of his nose.

“No,” he yells. “You can’t put that on me, _please -!”_

Keith struggles, but the cuffs locking his hands behind his back won’t let him loose. The Commander’s fingertips hook beneath his jaw. She uses her thumbs to bring the lower half of the muzzle up to his chin. He barely has enough time to make sure he’s not going to end up biting his tongue or lip before the pressure comes slamming into his teeth.

“Ngnn! Ngyou ngon’ ah-ersand!”

Horror spikes in his blood. _No! You don’t understand!_ They don’t understand, he’s going to - , he won’t be able to breathe, he’s sick, he’s going to - !

Of course, the Commander pays him no heed. She’s got a transmission to make with headquarters regarding their new high-value prisoner. She sure can’t have him screaming in the background and she probably wants him awake for interrogation the moment he gets transferred to wherever he’s going to end up. But what she doesn’t realise is that as she fumbles with the muzzle, making the necessary adjustments to ensure his jaws are clamped shut and the contraption is set firmly on his face, she’s simultaneously cutting off his breathing.

A buckle is fastened behind his head and some sort of lever locks the adjustments in place. Keith’s lungs scream. The adrenaline doesn’t help one bit, merely serving to amplify his panic. The Commander releases her grip on his head, smirking.

“That’ll shut you up,” she says, then walks away from him to pull up a communication frequency.

Keith doubles over. He shouts into his teeth, shaking his head, chest heaving. He should be able to breathe; there’s room in the muzzle to allow him to breathe through his nose. He should be able to breathe, only he can’t because of the cold he’s got thanks to his divided attention with the Blades and leading Voltron.

 _I should’ve just picked one,_ he thinks. But it’s far too late for regret. Unless the Commander realises he _can’t actually breathe_ , he’s…

The Commander’s voice grows further and further away. Keith’s eyes are screwed shut, so he’s not entirely sure of when he loses consciousness, but one of the last things he’s aware of is hands wrapping around his upper arms in a vice grip, then his knees leave the ground and the world feels like it’s spinning and distorting around him.

 _‘Keith,’_ Kolivan says on replay in his mind. _‘You’ll need to get on the ship undetected.’_

Perhaps if he’d been better at following orders, this wouldn’t be happening.

 

Lance’s blood runs cold. “H-Hunk?”

Blaster and cannon shots ring out down the hallway of the docked transportation ship. Somewhere, the whistling of Kolivan’s knife. Someone’s trying to talk to him over the comms. Lance thinks it might be Pidge, but it might be Allura, but…

None of that matters. Keith has no pulse – that’s what matters.

Before he’d even pried the horrid muzzle off his friend’s face, Lance could see there was a weird tinge to Keith’s skin. He’d seen it the moment he swung the cell door open and first laid eyes on Keith slumped on the floor. Lance is able to see it with a lot more detail now that he’s up close.

Keith’s face is so pale it’s almost grey. His features are slack, lips blue. Lance taps him on the cheek, blows softly on his eyelids. No response. He can’t feel the temperature of Keith’s skin with his fingers gloved, so he presses his forehead against his. He’s cold. Again, Lance check for a pulse, but there’s nothing, and Keith lies eerily still in his arms.

A shadow falls over them. Lance starts, but it’s just Hunk.

“Uh, Lance? How long are you going to – ” The big guy stops himself mid-sentence. “What’s…Keith, is he…?”

Lance bends over the body in his arms and breaks down crying. Beside him, the comms are going crazy. None of those voices coming from the helmet speakers is Keith’s. Voltron won’t ever hear his voice on those comms again. Lance won’t be met with his sarcasm, won’t ever hear again that soft quality to his voice that made his heart go a bit funny.

Hunk sounds uncertain. “Lance?”

“We’re a bunch of idiots, Hunk!” Lance cries. “We’re all wasting time hating on him and saying, ‘Is Keith even taking this seriously?’ while he’s _dying!_ ‘We’re all so disappointed in you, Keith’, and he’s _frickin’ dying!”_  

Hunk lays his hand on shoulder. “C-can’t we resuscitate him or something?”

With a vigorous shake of his head, Lance lets out a frustrated sob. “She can’t feel him anymore,” he says thickly.

“Who?”

“Red. She can’t register his quintessence. He’s gone, Hunk. He’s gone…”

He’d tried anyway, resuscitating Keith. It had been the first thing Lance had tried after removing the muzzle from Keith’s face and the cuffs from his hands. But he’d already known it was hopeless: the soul-shattering roar Red had let loose half a varga ago hadn’t been a pointless communication. Lance should’ve seen it coming, but he’d been in denial the whole flight across the to the Galra base, clung to the hope that Keith’s life could still be saved.

Lance lets Kolivan take Keith from him. Hunk hauls him to his feet, slings an arm across Lance’s shoulders as they stumble back down the hallways to their Lions. Red’s burning with grief and Lance is a mess of self-loathing and remorse.

Why had no one stopped Keith going on the mission? They’d all noticed how Keith’s voice had changed with his cold, but they’d been so pent up in their anger to care. Shiro’s disappointment had rippled throughout the atmosphere at Keith’s divided attentions. Everyone felt it and everyone registered it, but instead of taking a moment to consider how their begrudging might actually be affecting Keith, they’d jumped on-board the bandwagon.

Not so long ago, Keith had taken the time to listen to Lance. When Lance had been so caught up in self-doubt in regards to his worth as a paladin, he’d gone to Keith and hadn’t been chided, hadn’t received a sarcastic remark at his worries, hadn’t been ridiculed. ‘ _Leave the math to Pidge,’_ Keith had told him, smiling.

Smiling.

Keith’s smiles were rare. Now they were entirely non-existent.

 

Keith becomes one with fire and his ashes become space dust. The memory of him is burned into the minds of everyone on board the Castle of Lions, including Kolivan.

 

Voltron keeps going. In Keith’s absence, the Black Lion finally responds to Shiro.

The Blade of Marmora keeps going. A Blade at Commander Ranveig’s camp has yet to learn she’s lost her husband. She’s yet to learn that she’ll never have the chance to meet the young man her son has grown up to be.

Lance keeps going. Barely. He hadn’t realised how much he valued Keith’s company until now. It’s hard going, because everywhere he goes, he thinks of Keith. The training room, Red’s cockpit, meetings. He thinks of the smart comments the guy would make, the pointless arguments they’d get into. He thinks of easy it would’ve been to ask Keith how he was doing, maybe try to persuade him to take a bit of a break while he was sick. If only Lance had stopped being so _proud_ for a moment to drop the grudge he’d been holding.

He misses Keith. He misses him badly.

_I’m sorry. I could’ve…if only I’d-! Keith, I am so sorry!_

All he can do is learn from his mistakes. That’s the realisation Lance comes to. So when Shiro calls out to him in the void, Lance listens _hard_ , and though his connection to Shiro is no way near as strong as Keith’s had been, he’s able to receive the warning real Shiro has been trying to tell them for so long.

Lance makes up his mind. He’s not going to sit on the side-lines and do nothing this time. He knows something’s up and there’s something he can do about it.

He’s going to act.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea of turning this into a series came from the thought, "Keith's dead in this fic. That's that. He's not coming back....but what if there was a way to change that?" (Shout-out to CharacterCorner for the prompting word/name 'Lazarus'!) I don't intent for this to end up having the same amount of chapters as 'Under the Radar' etc, but we'll see what happens :) 
> 
> My main inspiration for these next few chapters is the amazing series 僕だけがいない街/Erased (best adaption is Netflix's recent live-action adaption), in which the protagonist Satoru Fujinuma travels back in time and has the chance to prevent three of his classmates from being killed. It's a powerful drama/suspense/thriller without going into the too-creepy-for-comfort territory. I highly recommend it!

 Lance wakes with a weird sensation of falling. He opens his eyes and groans. The Castle of Lions is still on its night time cycle, so it’s far too early to be getting up yet. The moment he’s awake, though, grief starts eating at his heart again, so he decides he may as well do something.

A quick check of the time tells him there’s half an hour till his first alarm is due to go off. Usually he doesn’t get up until the seventh, but knows he’s not going to be able to go back to sleep. Lance rubs his hands over his face, considering. Lately he’s been skipping his morning skincare routine. He knows he should pick it up again, take care of his skin, but somehow he just doesn’t care anymore.

Instead, he wanders out to the bathroom, gives his face a wash and then heads up the bridge to see what the others are up to. He’s hardly looking where he’s going though, and he ends up traipsing down the hallway leading to the kitchen.

Pidge lets out a yelp. “What the - ?!”

Lance jolts back to the present. His eyes widen. Coffee is spilling over the rim of the cup Pidge is holding, trailing over her fingers and dripping onto the floor. 

“I’m so sorry!” he exclaims. “I didn’t see you there.”

He braces himself for a sarcastic comment in reply, an outburst of tired anger. Lance and Shiro aren’t the only ones who took a heavy blow with the loss of Keith: Pidge found her brother a week ago but has been dealing with the conflicting emotions ever since. She’d told them all about the graveyard she stumbled across, and Lance can see it clear as day in her eyes that she still is recovering from the shock of coming across Matt’s gravestone so soon after losing Keith. It's fair enough if she's a little grouchier than usual.

“Uh, Lance?" Pidge says, tilting her head to the side. "You okay?”

Lance blinks. Confusion sets in. _Why is she saying that so lightly all of a sudden?_ He must be staring at her blankly, because she tilts her head to the side, an eyebrow raised.

“Are you sleepwalking or something? ‘Cause you’re acting strange.”

“What?” Lance frowns. “I’m perfectly awake, thank you very much.”

Pidge smirks. “Alright,” she hums, turning back in the direction of the kitchen. “Just make sure you’re actually awake later on. Don’t you go screwing up the lion choreography like Hunk did last time.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure thing…”

Wait. _Lion choreography?_ But they’re not flying their Lions in today’s Voltron Show. They’re performing on some planet’s ice skating rink, aren't they?

He’s trying to clear his head, wondering if there’s something wrong with him, when he nearly bumps into someone wearing a red jacket at the junction of hallways. Lance mumbles an apology and continues on his way to the bridge, his mind on asking Shiro or Coran if there’s a change in plans for the day’s activities. Then realisation hits him. He spins around, eyes wide.

Keith. It’s Keith. Standing four metres away from him. Alive.

“ _Keith_.” Lance gapes. “Y-you’re…not dead?”

The Red paladin regards him with an odd look. “No…” There’s a twitch in his cheek. “Would you rather I was?”

“No!”

“Then what?”

Lance shuffles back down the hallway in his lion slippers. He reaches out a finger to poke Keith’s shoulder, but Keith slaps his hand away reflexively. There’s a little more force than necessary in that action and it’s that which tells Lance he didn’t just imagine it.

“Lance,” Keith says hesitantly. “Are you okay?”

“ _Me?_ ” he squeaks. “No, no, no. The question is, are _you_ okay?”

Keith frowns. “I’m fine. Why?”

Lance’s mind races. He’s alive, he’s not hurt, he’s not sick. Keith’s fine, just like he says he is. But Lance’s memory won’t let go of the haunting image of this guy looking quite the opposite and it’s one of the things Lance is having trouble dealing with.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Keith remarks. “Is everything alright?”

“What? Yeah, I guess. I mean, _I don’t know!_ ”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Lance’s face screws up. There’s no way he can talk to Keith about the fact that he’s still grieving _his_ death when he’s standing right in front of him. His hands fly up to his head. He rubs his temples, tries to calm his breathing.

“Lance?”

“It’s fine. I’m fine.” He looks uncertainly up at Keith, wondering if he should elaborate. Lance decides he’ll probably just weird the guy out if he does. He lies instead, saying, “I think I just had a bad dream last night, that’s all. It has me a bit on edge, y’know what I’m saying?”

Keith’s gaze softens, a small smile crossing his lips. “Yeah.”

Lance remembers now. Keith’s not a stranger to nightmares. When Shiro was missing, the guy hadn’t been able to sleep without having one. He’d been under so much stress, dealing with his grief over Shiro and the new role of leadership he’d had to step into, it’s a wonder he didn’t end up sick…

When Lance doesn’t say anything else, Keith shifts on his feet. “Well, if that’s all, then I’m going to go grab some breakfast.”

“Yeah…no, it’s all good…”

 _What am I saying? No, it’s not all good._ But Keith’s already walked around the corner when Lance goes to call out to him, so he grimaces and decides to leave it. Until he has an idea of what’s happening, it’s probably safer to keep his mouth shut. The last thing Lance wants is for everyone to think he’s lost his mind. Then again, maybe he has.

 

Keith leaves on a Blade mission. Lance already knows that the ship they’re going to investigate is a decoy, that a Blade names Regris isn’t going to make it out of there. But the words are stuck in Lance’s throat and he doesn’t have the heart to warn Keith.

At least he finally has an idea of what’s happening. _I’ve gone back in time._

Lance finds himself uncharacteristically quiet while he chews on that thought. Fireworks go off in the stadium they’re putting on a show at, but Lance’s heart isn’t in it. Confetti bursts into the air but all he can think about is the scene Keith’s probably confronted with right now: shrapnel and other decoy ship debri.

Four lions where there should be five. Lance acknowledges the inconvenience, the nagging disappointment, but he doesn’t respond to it. He doesn’t participate in the complaints regarding Keith’s absence, nor does he strengthen the negative vibe emanating from the group with his own like he did in the last timeline. He’s acting weird, he knows; it’s not in his character to miss an opportunity to retort, especially when it’s about Keith. But he can’t bring himself to do it, even when the words fall so easily on his tongue.

Down below, Shiro has his arms crossed. It doesn’t take much to know he’s angry at Keith’s lack of engagement in these activities. Lance had so readily felt the same way the first time round, but now that he’s aware of what Keith’s currently dealing with on a mission elsewhere, being angry at him just feels _wrong._

Instead, he spends his time and energy raking his brain as to what on earth he can do to prevent Keith’s death this time around. All Lance knows is that he went back in time for a reason. It doesn’t matter how it happened; all that matters is that he finds a way to save Keith.

 

Hunk and Pidge are eyeing him curiously after the Voltron show. Allura’s gone to intercept Keith on his way from the pod bay, and Lance is about to hurry down the hallways to intercept _her_ when Pidge pulls him up short.

“Lance, spill it.” She frowns at him, eyes narrowed. “You’ve been acting weird all day. What’s the deal?”

_Keith just lost a teammate and Allura’s probably going to lecture him about teamwork. He doesn’t need that right now._

Hunk folds his arms over his chest. “Yeah, man. You’re never this quiet. Are you feeling okay?”

_Fatigue alone wouldn’t make Keith sick, would it?_

“Lance?”

_It’s the emotional stress, isn’t it? Heck, it’s us. We’re the reason he –_

“Lance!”

Pidge is glaring at him now. This Pidge is so much different from the grieving Pidge he was around yesterday. _You have no idea what’s coming,_ Lance thinks. _You have no idea that you’re going to find your brother soon. You have no idea that, before you even go out to search for him, Keith’s going to be dead and - !_ But he can’t say any of this to her. She might understand some science concept which could explain why he’s travelled back in time, memories of the past timeline intact, but Lance doubts she’ll believe him if he tells her.

Lance waves his hands in a vague gesture. “I’m just having serious déjà vu right now,” he says. He lightens his tone, trying to cover up how serious this situation really is. “Is anybody else having this? Hunk? You, Pidge? No, just me?”

“Yep,” Pidge mutters. “Just you.”

Lance makes a show of looking disappointed. “Alright, then.”

“Has this been happening all day?” Hunk asks.

Lance nods. “I…maybe I’m just tired. I should get some rest.”

Hunk gives him a sympathetic smile. Pidge doesn’t comment.

With no more questions being fired at him, Lance takes the chance and leaves the bridge. Allura’s probably finished saying what she needs to say by now, so Lance heads to his room instead of the pod bay. Maybe he’ll be able to think clearer once he’s back in his own clothes again…

He rounds the corner in time to see Keith storm into his room. The doors close gently behind him, but they do nothing to mask the frustrated shout that follows a heartbeat later. Lance treads carefully. He pauses outside of Keith’s door, contemplating checking to see if he’s okay. The metallic whistling that ends with a _thunk_ dangerously close to the doorway decides for him.

 _He needs space right now. I’ll talk to him later._ There’s still time to talk to him: about a movement, if Lance remembers correctly. _I’ll give him a chance to cool down and talk to him tomorrow._

He’s continuing on his way to his room one door down when he freezes. Keith just barked. A cough. The start of the cold which, combined with getting captured on his next mission and having that horrid thing shoved on his face, ended up taking his life.

 _Tomorrow,_ Lance reassures himself. _I’ll see what I can do from tomorrow._

It's this very thought that he later comes to regret.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise things will get better soon. For now though, here's some more heartbreak...
> 
> (10/07, 13/07) Edited a few paragraphs for better sentence flow :)

“Quiznak,” Lance mutters as he heads for Red’s hangar. “How could I have been so stupid?”

Keith’s not in his room, not on the bridge and not in the training room. No one has seen him around all morning, not even Black. When Lance arrives in the Lion’s hangar, Black is still there, showing no signs of having moved since Keith last flew her…however long ago that was. Keith is a master at keeping to the shadows when he wants to be left alone. But he can’t hide from a Lion he’s bonded to, right?

Lance narrows his eyes at the hallway floor. He’s been in this part of the timeline before; he should remember what happens. Maybe that’s the problem – he’d been so caught up in himself, in selfishly indulging in his own frustration, in his own inconvenience, to notice how his actions (or lack of) might be affecting Keith. Now Lance can’t even find the guy to apologise. 

_Dear Lord, I hope it’s not too late…_

Six minutes of light jogging later, Lance reaches Red’s hangar. He may have been flying Red for a good month and a half now, but in Lance’s eyes she’s still Keith’s Lion. Everyone knows how close those two were. Lance suppresses the sadness that rises in his throat then. It’s not a lie that he misses Blue. He’s getting along with Red just fine, but Blue had just been so…familiar.

Red’s eyes flash. Images flood through Lance's mind.

_Shiro, Keith’s only sense of familiarity from Earth, gone. Unfamiliar._

_Flying the Black Lion. Unfamiliar._

_Leadership. Unfamiliar._

_Going against his instincts, the very instincts that have allowed him to survive for so long, all for the sake of the team. Unfamiliar. But his efforts aren’t good enough: Shiro needs to step in, stop him from going after Lotor; he joins the Blades on missions, since they’re desperately low on numbers, only to have his team scold him for not taking his role seriously; he tries to lead, no one listens; he discovers some information of potentially high value, but Shiro doesn’t want to hear it, instead_ orders _him to get to his Lion – after which Lance, Pidge, Hunk and Allura all have a go at him for showing up late._

 Lance’s heart sinks. Through all of it, the only person really giving him a chance is Kolivan. Everyone else, including Lance, has been pushing Keith away the entire time.

 _Not all of that came from Red,_  he realises. _Some of that…that stuff was from Black._ This revelation comes more in the form of understanding and emotion than it does in clarity of thought. He rubs a hand over his forehead, frowning. He hadn’t thought it would’ve been this simple with Red, getting to this point. All he had to do was ask…

_‘Maybe you just have to knock?’_

“Red,” Lance says, looking up at the Lion. “Can you help me? Do you know…can you tell me where Keith is? Please?”

When he receives nothing more from his mental link with her, he begins to worry.

“Please, Red. Y-you’ve got to help me,” he stammers. “I don’t know if you know what’s going on with me, but I-I think I’ve gone back in time – or maybe I’m stuck in a time loop until I figure out how to stop it from happening, I don’t know. I need your help, Red. Keith’s going to die if he goes on this next mission.”

_Already on a mission._

Lance’s eyes widen. “Yes, yes, I know. The _next_ one. The one where he…where he…”

He trails off, not wanting to finish the sentence. With a grimace, he closes his eyes and recollects his thoughts.

“When he comes back from the mission that he’s on,” Lance says slowly, “can you please tell me where he is? Sorry, Red. I should’ve been more specific.”

Red is silent. Lance waits, but there’s no more words, no more imagery assailing his mind. No more of Keith’s emotions. There’s just an unnerving silence, one that leaves him feeling more hopeless than ever.

“Please, Red. You’ll do that for me, won’t you?”

He decides he’s going to have to wait and see. The Lions of Voltron aren’t entirely sentient anyways, so it’s not Lance should be disappointed that a giant mechanical space cat isn’t answering him.

He still has time. Keith hasn’t left for that mission yet. There’s still enough time to stop him from going on that mission. It’s just…the memory of Keith’s dead body is still fresh in his mind, as is the overwhelming sorrow of his own heart breaking while Shiro loses his composure and breaks down sobbing …

Lance isn’t sure he can handle finding Keith dead a second time around.

As it turns out, Keith is actively avoiding them as much as possible. He doesn’t return to the Castle after the mission, though it isn’t hard to guess why after the lecture Allura gave him.

Lance is too busy with helping Pidge keep inventory of supplies to leave the Castle in search for him. When it comes to handing out parcels to the refugees, Lance tries to keep his face bright but all he can think about is how scarce time is. If he remembers correctly, there’s less than a day before Keith's next mission. That’s hardly any time at all, considering he still doesn’t know whereabouts Keith is to be able to have a talk with him. It’s not going to be easy trying to convince Keith not to go, but it’s imperative Lance tries.

As he’s passing out the parcels, this is what he thinks about – how best to talk to him. Well, first he’s got to _find_ the guy –

Kolivan. The Blade leader walks behind the crowd of refugees, a shorter Blade trailing behind him. Lance catches a glimpse of Keith’s face turned towards them before he raises his mask and continues on after Kolivan.

Lance hands the refugee in front of him the box in his hands, then whirls on Allura.

“I’ll be back,” he blurts, then he jumps out of the cargo ship hold and races after Keith’s retreating figure. 

“Keith!”

Keith flinches, guiltily lowering his mask. He stops in his tracks while Kolivan walks on ahead. Lance catches up with him in no time.

“Lance,” Keith says, words thick with nasal congestion. “What’s wrong?”

 _Oh no._  “I’d be honest with you, buddy,” Lance says, “but you wouldn’t believe me. Just trust me when I say this: please don’t go on your next mission.”

Apparently that’s the wrong thing to say.

Keith’s eyes narrow and his nose twitches. “I’m going.”

“But you’re sick, aren’t you?”

“We’re not going to turn the tides of this war with Voltron alone. Cold or not, this is something I have to do.”

Lance shakes his head. “No, you don’t understand. If you go on that mission – “

“Voltron will be down one Lion. I’m well aware of that. And the Blade missions are risky – I get that.” Keith eyes are alight with anger. “We’re in a war, Lance; not everything’s as straightforward and easy as we’d like it to be.”

One Lion. He’d said ‘one Lion’ not ‘one paladin.’ Lance grimaces. “No, Keith – ”

“I’m going on this mission. You can’t stop me.” To emphasise his point, Keith raises his mask again before he turns and marches away.

Lance curls his hands into fists. He’s peeved. It takes all his resolve to hold his tongue, to stop himself from making some harsh comment at his friend’s back. If Keith would stop being so stubborn and just  _listen_ for a moment –

_Not anger._

_Red?!_ Lance’s frustration dies down.

_Fear._

_What? What does Keith have to be afraid of? He didn’t seem scared at all when I talked to him about the missions just now._

_Rejection._

_…what?_

_Not anger – fear. Rejection._

_Oh, quiznak._ That’s the emotional stress that’s been plaguing Keith: his fear of rejection.

Too late Lance realises what he’s just done, approaching Keith with words that could’ve so easily been misinterpreted as something along the lines of ‘if you’re not joining us on Voltron missions, then are you really part of the team?’ But Keith’s already vanished from sight and Lance realises it’s too late for an apology.

He’s screwed up. He’s screwed up big time and he knows what happens next.

 

 

Lance clings to the hope that there’s still time to do _something._

As soon as Shiro receives Kolivan’s SOS and sends Lance and Hunk on the extraction mission, Lance pushes Red into the fastest flight he’s ever flown. But then it happens, while he’s waiting for Hunk to catch up in Yellow before he plunges down into the planet’s atmosphere – Red roars. Lance’s breath catches in his throat, heart beating wildly in his chest.

_No…_

Ten minutes is too long. Lance barrels out of Red the moment they touch down. Hunk scrambles after him, but Lance is too anxious to slow himself down. He knows the way to the cell from last time so he makes good time, but there’s still sentries to dispatch and a couple of doors Pidge is a little slow on getting them access through. Lance hisses under his breath, ignoring Hunk’s attempts to reassure him that they’ll get Keith out there, that he doesn’t need to worry.

 _Whether or not we get him out_ alive, _Hunk, that’s what I’m concerned about!_

Kolivan meets them in the hallways. Lance keeps on running.

_I should’ve made time for him. I should’ve chased after him the moment I first saw him after the time thing happened, asked him how he was doing. I should’ve spoken up for him while I had a chance…!_

Tears are in his eyes by the time he reaches the cell. The scene is exactly the same.

“No…” Lance whispers. He pulls the cell door open, forces himself over to the motionless Blade lying on the floor. “Not again.”

Lance can deny it as much as he wants, but that doesn’t change the fact that Keith’s dead. Red’s roar wasn’t simply a warning to say Keith was in danger – it was the severing of a bond through death. If Keith was still able to be brought back to life, Red wouldn’t have roared the way she did.

With shaking hands, Lance removes the muzzle and the cuffs. He cradles Keith in his arms, holds him tight against him and lets the tears come willingly. It’s too late to apologise. He knows that.

Unless...

“Send me back,” he gasps. Lance squeezes his eyes shut. “Send me back. I’ll do better, I swear.”

 Hunk comes in. Lance doesn’t let go of Keith this time. Hunk tries to take their friend’s body from his arms but Lance doesn’t let him.

 _Send me back,_ he begs silently. He’s almost praying, only he has no idea who or what he’s talking to. _Please!_

Lance sobs into Keith’s hair, lost for words at how badly he wants to have just _one more chance_ to go back in time and change things. If he has to live in a world – in a universe – without Keith Kogane, that’s fine, he’ll manage…but there’s no way he’s going to let himself believe that this going back in time was all for nothing.

The noise of voices and a skirmish down the hallway grow strangely dim. His words are nothing more than a great torrent of emotions now, the intensity of this feeling so _heartbroken_ making Lance feel faint. He realises he can’t hear Hunk’s voice anymore.

In his panic, he opens his eyes against the spinning of the world around him and –

He’s in his bed on the Castleship. Lance finds himself curled in on himself, heart hammering and fingers clutching at his shoulders. His blanket is in the process of slipping off the bed.

He forces himself to calm down. Nervously, he pulls himself upright and glances at the time. Lance’s breath catches in his throat. He stares at the numbers on the orange device’s clock, hardly daring to believe what he sees there.

There’s still half an hour until his first alarm goes off.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone for your kudos/comments/reblogs on tumblr!! <3

Keith holds his head in his hands, trying to shut out the noise of the war going on in his mind. Shiro’s disappointed scowl flashes in and out, his teammate’s disgruntled remarks and unnatural silences… they couldn’t be clearer how much they disapprove of Keith’s divided attentions.

It’s getting to the point that it’s actually debilitating. He’s losing sleep over this. Keith’s exhausted already, what with all the travel he’s been doing to and from Blade missions, not to mention dealing with Shiro’s unsettling attitude, Kolivan’s constant reminding him not to break protocol –

There’s a knock on the door. Keith’s heart sinks. _Now what?_

With a groan, he gets up from where he’s been sitting on the edge of his bed the last…however long…and opens the door to find Lance standing there in his pajamas. He looks surprising wide-awake, for this hour, and Keith can’t help but wonder what on earth has him up so early.

“Hey, man,” Lance murmurs. He hesitates, eyes flickering over Keith’s face. “C-can I ask you something?”

Keith’s walls shoot straight up. He raises an eyebrow, trying to act unbothered, but he’s guarded and by the way Lance’s eyes flash, it shows on his face.

“I was just wondering if you wouldn’t mind teaching me some moves sometime?”

“Moves?”

“Sorry, I mean as in training,” Lance says hastily. “Like close-combat or hand-to-hand fighting or something.” He tilts his head to the side, wincing. “If…that…wouldn’t be too much of a hassle?”

Keith crosses his arms over his chest. “Why this all of a sudden?”

The trepidation on Lance’s face is palpable. He opens his mouth to say something, then shuts it, looking somewhat at a loss for how to explain himself. Lance glances sideways, shoulders tense.

“It’s just that…I do a lot of long-range stuff, but without a gun I’m, well, kinda useless.” Lance shrugs. “I figured you’d be the best one to learn from.”

Something’s different about Lance. Only yesterday, he’d been complaining about Keith’s showing up late all the time and not taking Voltron’s aid operations as seriously as he should be. Now, though… it’s like Lance woke up a different version of himself.

_Maybe it’s just because he woke up earlier than usual. This friendliness will most likely wear off in a few hours, and he’ll be back to retorts and frustration and complaints._

“Alright,” Keith says. “Maybe later? I need to discuss some things with Shiro, and I’m half-expecting Kolivan to call at some point, but…”

Lance isn’t fazed, though. For some weird reason, he almost looks…relieved? Keith shrugs the thought away, his mind to busy organising his thoughts and arguments for when he approaches Shiro.

As he’s leaving the bridge for his Blade mission, Keith catches Lance watching him with another odd look on his face. He spares to wonder if the guy had a bad dream or something and that’s why he’s acting so strange, but then he’s on his way to rendezvous with Kolivan and Regris and the thought gets shoved to the back of his mind.

 

 

Lance beats Allura to the pod bay. Keith’s just come through the hangar doors, his gaze steely, when Lance catches up to him. Keith scowls, shoulders tensing.

“Lance,” he says, “I know you all are made at me but I’m not in the mood for a lecture.”

Without a second thought, Lance steps forward and pulls Keith into a hug. Keith stiffens drastically, arms coming up as thought to fend Lance off, but he stills, confused.

“What are you…?” Keith whispers hoarsely.

Lance tightens his embrace just a little. “Giving you a hug. What does it look like?”

Perhaps it’s not exactly what Keith needs right now, but he doesn’t protest and it wards Allura away when she stumbles across them standing in an awkward half-hug in the hallway.

“Are you doing okay, man?” Lance asks when the Princess’ footsteps fade away in the direction she came from. “We heard what happened on your mission. I’m sorry to hear it – ”

“I’m fine,” Keith interrupts. “It’s war; these things happen.”

Something in him seems to threaten to give way. Lance feels him sink into the hug slightly before Keith realises what he’s doing and withdraws abruptly. Lance doesn’t hold him back.

“I, uh…” Keith trails off. He flashes Lance a sad smile and steps aside, about to take his leave. Then he stops and considers Lance for a moment. “Do you still want to practise short-range combat?”

The question catches Lance off guard. Keith’s just come back from a mission-gone-wrong and he’s asking if, now of all times, Lance would like some training? It’s on the tip of his tongue to retort, but it occurs to him before he can that Keith could probably do with something to take his mind of things. In fact, it’s probably less important to distract him than it is to give him the opportunity to use up the negative energy that’s emanating from him.

“Sure,” Lance says. “If you’re up for it?”

Keith grimaces. “You’ll have to go easy on me, though.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You’re way better than I am.”

“I’m tired,” Keith says flatly. “Can’t you tell?”

Lance stares at him. _I-is he being sarcastic or…_. ?

“Meet you on the training deck,” Keith says before walking past. Lance doesn’t miss the half-smile on his friend’s face.

 

By the time Keith arrives at the training deck, out of his Marmora suit but with double the negative energy he came out of the hangar with. Lance can feel the frustration rolling off him in waves.

“Whoa, dude. You okay?”

Keith mutters, “Allura.”

Lance inwardly groans. “She really doesn’t get it, does she?”

Keith’s face goes blank. He stares at Lance, eyes wide and unblinking, before he catches himself and looks away with a curious frown. Lance wonders what that’s all about but Keith doesn’t seem to want to elaborate.

“Alright,” he says, voice tight. “What do you want to focus on?”

Lance considers. What’s a bad scenario that would land him, and his teammates, in trouble if it happened? If he had a gun in his hands, even at close range he’d be able to do something, so that’s not so much of a problem. But if he were weaponless…

“If someone comes at you,” Lance says, “and you don’t have your knife on you, what do you do?”

Keith’s eyes flash, brow furrowing as he envisions the situation Lance is proposing. He waits for more detail, but Lance has no idea what else to add so doesn’t say anything.

“Attack or defence?” Keith asks.

“Attack or defence?”

“As in, are you attacking or is someone attacking you?”

Lance hums in thought. He’d like to practise a bit of both kinds of techniques, but Keith has had a long day already and Lance doesn’t want to keep him.

“How about defence, then?”

Keith goes eerily still. Lance sees the smirk on his face a moment before a fist comes flying at his face. With a squeak of alarm, Lance dances out of the way only to have a hand knock him off balance. He trips over his own feet and lands heavily on the ground.

“Hey!” Lance pushes himself upright. “No fair. You didn’t give me any warning.”

Keith grunts. “You think your opponent’s gonna wait for you to get ready?”

With a pout, Lance gets to his feet and straightens up. “Alright. Good point.”

“That was a good dodge reflex, but you didn’t continue it. That’s why my second hit got you.”

“Uhh, okay?”

Keith shifts his weight to the side, deep in thought. Lance waits patiently, watching as the pain in his friend’s eyes gives way to something more focused and calm. _Centred_ , Lance thinks. _Almost like thinking about all this is helping to ground him in the wake of the mission going bust._

“You dance, right?”

Lance is startled out of his thoughts. “Sorry? Dance? Yeah, a bit.”

“What kind? Short movements that are timed to the music or longer, flowing movements, like in ballroom?”

Lance grins. “Keith and ‘ballroom’ in the same sentence? Well, I never – ” He cuts himself short when he realises that the unamused look Keith’s giving him means that he’s in no mood for teasing. “Sorry. Yeah, I danced for a little while, but then I got accepted into the Garrison so had to quit.”

“Alright. So you should understand what I’m going to describe to you.” Keith faces him square on and nods at Lance’s feet. “Okay, I’m your opponent. I’m coming at you.” When Lance does nothing, he raises an eyebrow. “Stand as though I’m about to attack you.”

Lance does so, bending his knees and spreading his feet so they’re shoulder-width apart. Keith comes at him and Lance tries to dodge but isn’t fast enough. Keith’s palm lands hard on his shoulder, causing him to stumble backwards a few steps.

“You’re easily thrown off balance,” Keith observes. “Keep your weight in the ball of your feet, not your heels. Once you put your heel down, you stop.”

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Lance remembers his dance teacher once reminding one of the more advanced students about that. He nods, frowning in concentration. Keith’s not a teacher, and Lance struggles to keep up with what he’s being instructed to do.

_Weight in the balls of my feet, not the heels._

After bouncing up and down a few times to get his feet to respond accordingly, Lance settles back down into his braced-for-attack stance, this time ensuring his heels aren’t the main point of his balance. Once he’s confident he’s got that reasonably in check, he glances back up at Keith.

Keith nods. “Better. But you’re not moving yet. When I come at you this time, keep practising that. Obviously, if you’re going forwards then you walk onto your heel, but make sure you use your ankles and toes to push yourself forwards, not your heel.”

_Anyone would think Keith to ballroom lessons himself,_ Lance thinks. He marvels at how much these concepts work for both dancing and fighting. As he’s dodging Keith’s attacks this time, he realises how much of a dance this really is. _No wonder Keith always looks so graceful when he fights._

“Let your movements flow,” Keith says as he takes a swing at Lance’s face. “Once you start a movement, try to keep them flowing as much as possible. Roll from one move into the next.”

Lance’s head spins. He’s simultaneously concentrating on avoiding Keith’s attacks and trying to get his feet to respond in this new way of moving. He succeeds in doing a same-foot lunge, something he’s seen in the waltz, but then he gets so caught up in having learnt this new move without even thinking about it that he fails to see Keith’s fist before it connects with his jaw. Lance stumbles sideways, hand coming up to the face.

“Ow…”

Keith’s expression is hard to read. “If I were seriously fighting you, you’d be out cold on the floor right now.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lance mumbles. “That’s precisely why I asked you to help me out with some tactics on how to avoid just that…Keith?”

Keith’s eyes have gone dim, his gaze empty. There’s no focus in them. They’re clear, and he blinks, looks up at Lance at the sound of his name, but the emptiness doesn’t fade from them.

“What’s up?”

But Keith just closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and makes a visible effort to concentrate on the task at hand. “It’s nothing,” he says. “Sorry.”

Lance doesn’t reply to that. ‘Sorry’ feels misplaced in Keith’s answer and he doesn’t know quite why. Keith’s already talking again, however, so Lance is forced to shove his misgivings to the side.

“Momentum. Use your opponent’s momentum against them, if you can.”

Keith demonstrates by running through a few different movements. He gets Lance to catch his wrist when he throws a punch at him and then immediately yank him forwards until he’s stumbling with his own momentum. So that Lance gets the gist of it, they reverse the roles, with Lance throwing the punch and Keith pulling him forwards. It’s surprisingly effective. He’s about to ask why he wasn’t able to use Keith’s momentum against him as well as Keith used his, but he’s beaten to it.

“Don’t hold back,” Keith says firmly. “When you go in for an attack, commit to it. Don’t move half-heartedly – not only does it lack strength, it screws up the flow of your own movements and makes you hesitate.” He looks Lance in the eye. “Like putting your heel down.”

Lance nods, understanding. “Right.”

They practise the same exercise until Lance _commits_ and forces Keith into a forward roll in order to catch himself. Keith stands up with a wide grin.

“That was great.”

Lance’s own smile falters. Keith smiling is such a rare thing these days. Lance tries to memorise the detail in it, tries to make sure that the image is burnt into the back of his mind. The way Keith’s eyes shine a little brighter, the way the ever-present frown vanishes into that captivating grin…

It’s the image of Keith dead on the cell floor that’s at the front of his mind, though. He hears Keith, alive, standing in front of him, perplexed, calling his name. The memory of the last two timelines won’t give him a break, however, and that alone is enough to motivate him to _not hold back._ No more _‘I’ll talk to him tomorrow’._ No more hesitation.

_That’s where I went wrong the first time around of this time loop. I hesitated. I didn’t give it everything I had… I mean, I_ tried _, sure – but I didn’t_ commit. _I didn’t talk to Keith while I had the chance. I didn’t ask him how things were going or stop to think about how our words might be affecting him. There’s still a lot that’s out of my control, but I can at least give him some support instead of pushing him away…like I did in the first timeline._

The next few scenarios they play out, Lance practises the concept of committing. Keith seems genuinely impressed by his progress, which does give Lance a bit of confidence, but he still doubts his ability to change the outcome of what’s to come again in this timeline.

“Hand-to-hand fighting doesn’t give you the luxury of having time to think like chess,” Keith says after a couple of bouts of non-choreographed sparring. “Your thinking must be instinctive, like reflexes.”

Lance rubs a hand over his shoulder, having coped a hard hit from Keith’s elbow after failing to correct his balance in time – no, he’d put his heel down accidentally, that’s what he’d done. All this training, these new ideas…Lance is worn out, and he can tell that Keith’s ready to call it quits fairly soon, too. But Lance is worried he might not have the chance to learn from Keith again, might not have the chance to talk to him before he goes off on _that_ mission, and so he says nothing of his aching limbs and the fatigue creeping over him.

It’s when Keith staggers sideways before hastily catching himself that Lance decides he’d better make the call to stop himself. They go another couple of rounds before it happens again. This time, Keith ends up sinking to his knees, the colour of his face a stark contrast against the grey of his shirt. Lance decides enough is enough.

“I think we should stop, huh?”

For a moment Keith looks like he’s about to refuse, probably out of habit, but then he seems to think twice about it. “Yeah,” he says, rubbing a hand over his forehead. “Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.”

“You alright? I’m sorry, we should’ve stopped sooner.”

“No, it’s fine. Really.” Keith brings a foot underneath him and slowly stands up again. “Thanks for this.”

Lance puts his hands on his hips. “Why’re you thanking me? You’re the one who probably just saved my life by teaching me some skills.”

Keith raises the back of his hand in front of his mouth and coughs. “No, it’s been…I can’t stop thinking about Regris,” he says quietly. “Feel like I could’ve done something to save him. This…it’s been good to distract myself from thinking too hard, even just for a short while.”

_‘Feel like I could’ve done something to save him’._ Those words echo in Lance’s head and stab him in the heart. They spin round and round in his mind long after they’ve left the training deck and parted ways. Lance thinks about everything Keith just taught him, about the importance of actually committing to an action and, more worryingly, the coughs that had followed Keith down the hallway to the showers.

He finds himself doubting again. _What if I’m not doing enough? What if I’m over-doing it, like last time when I tried to stop him from going on that mission? What if, no matter how many times I get to repeat this part of the timeline, I can never prevent Keith’s death?_  

No. There has to be a way. That’s why this whole time loop thing is happening in the first place, right?

Lance realises there may not be anything he can do to stop Keith getting sick, something he’s frustrated at himself with. If he could prevent the cold from taking hold, then Keith wouldn’t suffocate when that muzzle gets put on his face, which would be great, but it’s Keith’s exhaustion that’s rendering him sick.

_So,_ he thinks, sitting down on his bed after his shower. _I can’t stop Keith going on that mission and I can’t stop his from getting sick. I can’t stop him from getting captured, either, since Voltron’s out on a mission while Keith’s out on his. The last two timelines, he died before we could get to the base to rescue him._

Lance sighs, flops back on his bed. He stares at the ceiling but no epiphanies come to him.

_What else can I do to stop things getting to_ that _point?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I don't know any martial arts or actual fighting techniques as such, only some self defense stuff, basically everything I wrote in the sparring/training room scene is from what I've learnt from several years of latin and ballroom dancing (which I /do/ do). Also, in case anyone's wondering, here's my tumblr callaeidae3.tumblr :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks everyone for your kudos and comments! <3

With Keith on his second-to-last mission, Lance can only sit around and wait. There’s nothing he can do while Keith’s not here but _think_ , and it’s that exact thing that has Lance zoning out when he’s not supposed to be.

“Earth. To. _Lance!_ ”

Lance blinks. His eyes refocus on what’s in front of him: Pidge’s unamused face and a list of items he should’ve been recording quantities of. He grins sheepishly. Pidge fixes him with her unrelenting glare. The grin fades from his face and he hangs his head.

“Sorry, Pidge,” he murmurs.

“’Sorry’ doesn’t get the work done. Now, come on. There’s a lot of refugees who need supplies and they’re not going to get anything any time soon unless we do this job that we’ve been assigned to do.”

Lance sighs. Pidge repeats a series of numbers which he scribbles down on the paper in his hands, more than twice writing down the wrong number in the wrong quantity box. They can’t start packing any supply boxes until they have a full inventory of what they have and what they need to get more of. Pidge is eager to race ahead with the counting, just so they can get it done and move onto the next half of their job, but Lance is so distracted, so tired, so… _worried_ about what’s going to happen to Keith that he can’t focus as much as he’d like.

“Alright,” Pidge mutters, snapping him out of his zoning out again. She turns away from the counting she’d been working through, sitting cross-legged, arms folded on her chest and both eyebrows raised. There’s a twitch in her foot, just another hint at her impatience. “What’s wrong?”

If she were to take Lance seriously, then maybe he’d feel confident enough to tell Pidge what he knows. It’s not as though the idea of being stuck in a time loop or knowing a bit about the immediate future would be absurd to Pidge, but Lance knows that right now, while they’ve been stuck in a storage compartment counting stuff for a decent two hours, Pidge doesn’t have the patience to take him seriously.

“Oh, it’s nothing much,” Lance lies. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”

“Such as?”

Lance opens his mouth to reply, then hesitates. _How do I explain…how do I tell her that Keith’s going to wind up dead in three days’ time unless I can figure out how to stop it and it’s because I can’t figure out how to stop it from happening that I’m stressing out and can’t focus and –_

“Spit it out. What’s on your mind?”

 _Keith_ , he nearly says, but stops himself. Lance can imagine the snappy reaction he’s going to get if he mentions Keith’s name. It won’t be directed at him, but that’s not the point. The moment he brings up the subject, Pidge will be rambling on about how she, too, is annoyed at Keith’s lack of involvement with Voltron despite being team leader, et cetera.

“Lance?”

“Alright, alright.” Lance frowns, twirling the pencil in his fingers. “Have you ever…if you knew something bad was going to happen, like something really, _really_ bad, what would you do to try to stop it?”

Pidge’s gaze softens and her foot stops tapping the floor; she’s taking him seriously. She doesn’t say anything, something Lance takes as an invitation to elaborate.

“Like, ‘somebody’s gonna die if we don’t do anything about it’ kinda bad. It’s not an anxiety sort of thing. Well, I mean, not really. It’s just that…I have a really bad feeling about something, that’s all.”

 _That’s all? No, Lance, that’s not all and you know it._ He grimaces, realising there’s probably no other way around this but to tell Pidge what he knows. _But then how is that going to help? She’d suggest trying to stop Keith from leaving on the next mission, something Lance has already tried, something that he already knows won’t work._

“I think you’re overthinking things,” Pidge says. Her eyes flash and a sad smile crosses her face. “I don’t know if it helps or not, but my Dad used to have this favourite saying. I’m not sure if he just made it up himself or it was something he quoted, but…he always used to say to us, ‘If you get too worried about what could go wrong, you might miss the chance to do something great.’

Lance wishes for an epiphany but it doesn’t come. Nothing does. No inspiration, no solution, no new ideas about something that he _could_ do. If anything though, the saying does give him something else to think over. He can focus on the task at hand again, though, so that’s…well, better than nothing at all.

“Thanks,” he says, attempting a smile.

“All goods. Now let’s get back to this inventory stuff.”

 

Pidge’s words stay with him the rest of the afternoon. Strangely enough, though, it’s not the quote that does, it’s what she said before that: ‘ _I think you’re overthinking things.”_

_Overthinking…what?_

‘ _The Red Lion…requires a pilot who relies more on instinct that skill alone.’_

Something clicks. Allura’s words echo alongside Pidge’s. _Instinct. If you get too worried about what could go wrong (not instinctive) then you might miss the chance to do something great._

Lance understands now. He’s got to act in the moment. Not leave it till tomorrow, like he did last time. Not say, ‘ _oh nah, I’ll, uh, talk to him some other time when I’m feeling a bit braver’._ Not wait around for Kolivan’s call or for Red to let loose that terrible roar. He needs to follow his gut instinct.

When Keith returns from the mission and Lance meets him as he’s storming away from the Castle bridge, Lance _knows._ His heartbeat accelerates, the blood rushing to his head, adrenaline jolting through him with the insistence that he needs to act _now._

Keith’s angry. _He’s probably just talked to Shiro,_ Lance realises. _If he’s this upset, then it’s not long before he’s going to disappear on us. No, wait – correction. Keith’s on his way out now._

Lance acts.

He grabs a hold of Keith’s wrist and pulls him down the corridor that leads further _into_ the ship, not out of it.

Keith jerks his arm. “What’re you…?”

“No, no, no. No questions. You’re coming with me.”

Keith lets Lance drag him down the hallways. It’s odd. Not so long ago, Keith never would’ve even let Lance lay a hand on him, let alone lead him somewhere. It hits Lance, then, how easily Keith could’ve misinterpreted this as Lance pulling him away to yell at him. But no, if he’d been going to yell at Keith, he could’ve easily have done it in the hallway.

“The training room?” Keith mutters behind Lance.

Lance doesn’t let go of Keith’s wrist until they’re standing in the middle of the training deck. Then he turns, hands up, eyes narrowed.

“Hit me,” he says.

Keith’s face goes blank. “What?”

“Hit me,” Lance says again. “You’re angry, you’re sick and you’re Keith Kogane. That combination is going to get you in trouble _reeeally_ quickly unless you vent some of that anger. So go on, hit me.”

Keith lets out a laugh. He regards Lance like he’s out of his mind, but Lance keeps his expression firm. Keith’s eyes flash on realising Lance is serious.

A fist slams into Lance’s right hand. He staggers backward with a grimace but keeps his hands up. Lance braces himself as Keith throws punch after punch at him. He catches each one, catches every little bit of frustration his currently irritated half-alien, black-red paladin and Blade friend throws at him.

Then a sense of daring strikes him and Lance grins. Before Keith can see it coming, he steps aside as Keith’s fist comes flying forward, grabs his forearm in both hands and _yanks_ him sideways. Keith lets out a yelp of surprise and tumbles to the floor.

“Yeah!” Lance’s grin widens. “One point to me!”

He expects to be met with a scowl or a hiss of annoyance. If anything though, Keith looks baffled – not that Lance managed to pull off that move, but at himself.

“You’re a bit off your guard today, man.”

“Yeah…I noticed.”

Lance hums in agreement. Of course Keith would notice if he’s not up to his usual standard, but Lance knows from experience that telling Keith to rest won’t go down well. Telling him to not do so much would be like asking him to forget about the Blades and just do Voltron stuff.

Instead, Lance reaches out a hand. “You want to talk about it?”

Keith considers a moment. He studies the hand offered to him with a deep frown. After coughing into the crook of his arm, he grabs Lance’s hand and allows him to pull him up to his feet. It’s half a minute of semi-awkward silence before Keith answers him.

“I just…” Keith begins, his brow furrowed as he searches for the right words. “Everything’s getting to me, y’know? I get that I’m team leader and I get that these shows and what not hold some value to them….and I’m aware that not being around puts the team at risk. But the Blades are making good progress and the intel we’re gathering is invaluable. If there’s any chance that this intel might allow us to turn the tides of this war, then that’s a chance that we…that _I_ have to take.”

Lance watches Keith’s face closely as he speaks. It’s almost like he’s had to explain this to people many times over to the point it’s almost a speech. He realises then that Keith’s watching _him_ closely, too. Watching for any sign that Lance is disappointed, disapproving, is about to reject Keith and reject his reasoning and…

No team leader should ever feel such lack of support. None.

“If that’s what you feel is right, nobody’s going to stop you,” Lance says. He offers Keith a small smile and gives him a friendly slap on the back. “Just…take care of yourself, okay? We don’t want you overdoing it and overworking yourself.”

Keith seems genuinely taken aback at Lance’s kindness. He hastily covers up his astonishment with a smirk. “Or else what? You’re going to hunt me down, sneak past Kolivan and drag me back here?”

“If that’s what it takes, then yes.”

Keith’s jaw drops. Lance feels a twinge in his heart. He’s serious in what he’s saying, more serious than Keith will ever know – Lance doesn’t plan on sitting around this time. He knows what’s going to happen on that next mission, even if Keith is completely unawares.

“Look,” he says, “I know I can’t stop you. But Keith? You matter. To me, to the team, _for the love of –_ to the universe! We need you here, and what’s more is…” Lance trails off. His voice has gone tight and quiet. He forces the rest out. “If anything were to happen to you, we’d miss you. We all would.”

Keith sniffs. Cold or otherwise, Lance can’t tell. “What’s got into you all of a sudden? You been drinking nunvil or something?”

Despite the dark memory of previous timelines flashing in Lance’s mind, he manages to conjure up a decent laugh.

“Oh, no. That stuff is awful!”

Keith grins. “Tell me about it.”

It takes Lance’s breath away, that smile. He’s not sure a hundred percent why, but it does, and it’s disarming. Then he remembers finding him dead in the cell and it’s then that Lance vows to do all he can to protect that smile, because this is a war they’re fighting in and smiles don’t come easily around here anymore.

At some point Keith’s going to crash, even if he survives the next mission. Keith can’t keep going at such a hard pace forever, but it’s something he has to realise for himself for it to have any chance of really sinking in.

Time hasn’t run out yet.

Lance can’t fix everything. He knows that. He’s beginning to realise that maybe this time loop thing isn’t about preventing Keith’s death. Maybe there’s something else to be learned here, something of great worth to be gained even if saving Keith’s life isn’t part of that. It hurts, considerably, to think like that.

If it comes to that, he’ll have to deal with the pain. He’ll deal with the grief again. But that’s only if it comes to that. Lance isn’t giving up the fight that easily.

 

Lance changes his approach: he doesn’t wait for Kolivan’s SOS. As soon as Voltron disbands, he spins Red around and makes a beeline for Keith’s location.

Pidge’s face appears on Red’s dashboard. _“Woah, Lance! Where are you going?”_

“Keith!”

_“What?”_

Lance isn’t going to wait around for anyone. “There’s no time to explain!”

_“But how do you – “_

“Just shut up and trust me!”

That gets their attention. Shiro stops trying to jump in orders calling Lance back. Hunk stops asking him to wait. Pidge won’t stop trying to dissuade him, so he closes the connection.

He doesn’t have time. Keith doesn’t have time.

Lance arrives at the base, heart pounding. Red still hasn’t roared. Kolivan still hasn’t called through, but Lance isn’t taking his chances. Before he gets out of the Red Lion, whom he’s hidden out of sight of the base, he briefly wonders if maybe he _should_ wait for Kolivan’s call.

 _What if my presence attracts the base’s attention_ to _Keith?_

_What if he actually doesn’t get caught in this timeline?_

_Yikes! What if he’s not even here at the base yet? Or maybe he’s alive, Kolivan still hasn’t called yet but Keith’s being shipped off to who knows where??_

Pidge’s Dad’s saying cancels out his doubts. Worrying isn’t going to save Keith. Instincts. What are Lance’s instincts telling him?

There’s a churning in his stomach, a spike of adrenaline. Apprehension. Nervousness at his delay. And a solid _knowing._

Lance is out of his Lion and scooting across the distance to the base in seconds. He’s at the building in fifteen minutes, undetected. Red hasn’t roared yet. He’s got his comms switched to emergency frequency only so as not to distract him.

The main hangar has been left open. Prepared for take-off. Lance darts out of sight of a patrol of sentries, breathing hard. He waits, painstakingly waits, until they pass before he throws himself out of hiding and runs for the transportation ship.

Inside, he sprints. He ducks in and out of corridors, trying his best to avoid the sentries detection. He blasts the ones that see him.

It’s oddly quiet. Unnervingly quiet. Almost as if the attention of the base has been drawn to a focal point elsewhere on site. Lance has little time to consider that, along with Red’s silence, as he arrives at the prisoner holding cells.

He blasts his way through the control panel on the door, runs through the opening door before it’s even fully open and skids to a halt in front of -

Lance stares into the cell and swears under his breath.

The cell is empty.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tick....tock....

_Where is he??_

It’s unnerving. Unsettling, to say the least, especially when Lance’s gut is still telling him that he needs to go after Keith. There’s been no alert from Red, which means time hasn’t run out yet, but he can feel the seconds slipping away like water through his fingers.

Keith’s not on the ship, he decides. Thankfully, Lance has managed to get this far unnoticed. How long that will last, he doesn’t know. All he can do is hope that he finds Keith before anyone on this base finds him.

Tracing his footsteps back the way he came, Lance leaves the ship. The sentries he dispatched a few minutes ago lie sparking and broken on the floor. Nobody else bothers him. Once out of the ship, he takes a deep breath and scans his surroundings, bayard ready.

 _Keith would be way better at this than me,_ Lance thinks. _I seriously don’t know how he does it. This constant adrenaline is exhausting._

Lance concentrates his thoughts on Keith and on his bond with Red. He waits, worrying that Red’s not responding to him, when he feels the coil of tension in his stomach churn. No doubt about it, Keith’s on this base. He feels a tug at his chest then, something he’s drawn to. Lance narrows his eyes in the direction of an open corridor leading away from the hangar, and just like that he _knows._

Lance allows himself a soft snicker before creeping down the length of the ship on his way to the open corridor. Keith must’ve really grabbed their attention, because there’s no-one in the hangar. Not even a sentry. He considers this as he leaves the shadow of the transport ship and sprints across open space.

_This must’ve been where Keith was apprehended. If there’s no sentries or guards around, then they’re probably in the process of taking him to…wherever they’re taking him._

Wherever they’re taking Keith is where he needs to be. Lance doesn’t have a clue where he’s going, though, and he almost regrets pelting ahead of the others – ahead of _Pidge_ – without getting schematics first. But his gut’s still telling him that he doesn’t have time for that. _Keith_ doesn’t have time for that.

 _Just gonna have to follow my instincts._ Lance grimaces. Red growls in approval.

If there are security cameras watching him, no one must be watching the feeds. That’s great for Lance, but not so great for Keith. His senses are so heightened that the quiet of the hangar and the corridor ahead of him are making him paranoid – he thinks he sees movement near the ceiling at one point, but it’s clearly just a shadow. Like the Galra would station anyone up there, anyway.

He’s just cleared the hangar when he hears it – a scuffle up ahead. Lance flinches, freezes. _No, Lance, keep moving._ He slinks down the corridor, following the sound. Voices, more scuffling and a…a cough.

Lance’s heartbeat accelerates. Keith’s not dead.

A warning, in the back of his mind. Not _yet_.

As he’s dragged deeper into the base, Keith curses himself for getting caught. He digs his heels into the floor, tries to wrestle himself out of the foot soldiers’ grips, but nothing works and he knows he’s done for. If he can’t break free on his own, then that’s if for him; Kolivan’s not going to risk waiting around for him.

Already he’s mentally preparing himself for pain and interrogation, for dark cells and ruthless interrogators. Keith almost wishes this stupid cold of his would kill him like it feels like its doing. It’s not like he wants to die, but if it’s going to happen then he’d rather it be sooner than later.

_Better that than risk the Empire finding out anything about the Blades._

Not that he’d give them the information. Keith would rather endure pain a thousand times beyond his threshold, rather be broken countless times than give them that. Who knows? If he holds out long enough, maybe Voltron will come for him.

Actually no, he doubts that. He’s screwed up bad. He’s their current Black paladin and now he’s gone and got himself captured on a Blade mission. They’re probably all thinking, ‘ _Oh no, Keith’s gone. But you know what? Serves him right. If he’d only focused his attention on us…’_  

Lance’s voice breaks through. _“If anything were to happen to you, we’d miss you. We all would.”_

_But it’s not as if they’re gonna come for me. They’re better of finding someone else to lead the group. Maybe Black will finally let Shiro in, now that I’m gone._

_“I know I can’t stop you. But Keith? You matter. To me, to the team, for the love of – to the universe!”_

_I matter, huh?_ Would _they come after me? Would they really risk their own safety to come rescue me?_

_“If that’s what it takes, then yes.”_

Keith doesn’t have time to dwell on the metaphorical sword piercing his chest. An open doorway reveals the Command Centre of the base. Another foot soldier and a pleased, yet equally disgusted Commander are waiting for them.

“I knew they’d be here sooner or later,” says the Commander, scowling as Keith’s brought in. “I was expecting them to be more elusive than _this_ though. What a failure.”

Keith’s slammed back into the wall. His vision goes static. Hands disappear and appear around him. The Commander seizes his wrist and spins him around, arm twisting painfully behind his back. His blade is pried from his fingers and lands with a metallic twang on the other side of the room.

_“You matter. To me, to the team, for the love of – to the universe!”_

Between coughing and trying to catch his breath, Keith doesn’t have the energy left to put up much of a fight. His other arm is yanked behind his back. Something hard encases his wrists and then they’re clamped together. Keith winces. His hands are cramping already.

_“You matter.”_

The Commander releases him and her foot soldier takes her place. Keith barks at her as she rises, a cough more than anything else, but the Commander takes it as an insult and gives him a stern glare. Another cough escapes him involuntarily. A hand clamps down on the back of his neck.

“Shut it,” the foot soldier growls in his ear, “or we’ll shut it for you.”

Keith’s frustration simmers. It’s not like his body’s giving him much choice – he’s sick and he can’t help it that his lungs are trying to dispel the virus that’s got him sick in the first place. He tries to hold it in, but he’s still pressed up against the wall and it’s only a matter of seconds before a tweak in his throat muscles has him coughing again.

The fingers tighten around his neck. The foot soldier adjusts his grip on Keith’s arm and gives him a rough shake, only making it worse. Keith tries to keep it in, tries to contain it, but closing his mouth means he can’t breathe and so all he can do is let it out. His legs give out in a wave of dizziness and he ends up sliding down the wall to his knees.

Not before the Commander decides she’s had enough, though.

The Commander stomps out of the room and her footsteps echo down the empty hallway outside. Keith swallows down the rising anxiousness. He didn’t make her leave out of pure annoyance – no, she’s on her way to fetch something or someone. The soldier seems to know who or what it is, hand tightening on the back of Keith’s neck before he slams Keith’s forehead against the wall.

Dazed, his head throbbing and his chest aching, Keith lets himself be spun around. He blinks away the fuzziness crowding his vision and finds himself facing the centre of the room. Somehow that doesn’t bode well. He’s kept on his knees and the soldier, staying standing behind him, doesn’t relinquish his grip on Keith’s neck and upper arm. Seeing his blade lying where it was tossed, Keith wonders, briefly, if he’d be able to break free of the soldier’s hold and get to the other side of the room before…

Too late. The Commander’s coming back. She walks in carrying something, her eyes locked on Keith’s and her destination him. Keith tests his cuffs, heart hammering. The thing she’s holding…it’s for him, isn’t it?

He’s only just figured out what its purpose is when the soldier yanks his back by his hair and the Commander is on him.

 

Lance narrowly avoids being seen. At first he thinks he _has_ been seen, but the Commander’s footsteps don’t come his way, instead veering left into what appears to be the Command Centre.

It takes all of Lance’s self-control to tread quietly. His instincts tell him _go now_ but he knows he can’t risk losing the element of surprise – really, that’s the only thing he’s got going for him. But then sounds of Keith’s pleading are quickly replaced by a muffled, panicked scream…and choking.

_Go now._

Someone – the Commander, Lance assumes – stamps a foot. “That’ll shut you – ”

Lance pulls the trigger. The foot soldier lets out a yelp and the Commander whirls around, startled. Keith slumps forward and hits the ground sideways, writhing.

_No time to think._

The Commander lets out a hiss. Lance ducks under a blast from the foot soldier’s gun as the Commander hurls herself at him. _Instinct._ Launching himself out of his crouch, Lance twists and uses his momentum to ram the back of his bayard into the Commander’s face. She staggers, but she’s managed to reach him. In a heartbeat she’s regained her footing and a great, big arm bends to wrap around his head in a crushing hold –

Lance deactivates his bayard, turns and latches onto the Commander’s arm and then _throws_ her over his shoulder. She’s hit in the back by her foot soldier’s next blast, shielding Lance from the attack. Before she can recover, Lance has his bayard summoned again and swiftly knocks the Commander out.

The triumph doesn’t last long. The foot soldier has his Keith up on his knees, squirming. Keith’s eyes are squeezed shut, face pale. The soldier moves so that he doesn’t slide back to the ground before bringing his gun –

Lance’s bayard fires. It hits the side of Keith’s face, exactly where he wanted it. The foot soldier drops him. Keith jerks. Lance switches his bayard to stun and fires again, and the soldier topples to the ground beside Keith.

Red hasn’t roared yet.

“Keith!”

He’d hoped his shot would’ve broken the muzzle. It did, but there’s a lever on the other side of it that’s keeping the straps in place. _Knife,_ he thinks, but his gut tells him there’s no time. Keith’s face is screwed up in pain but he’s not moving anymore. Adrenaline pumping through his veins, Lance lays a hand over the side of Keith’s head, fingers splayed, and with his other hand, _pulls._

At first, the lever doesn’t budge. Doesn’t even give. Under his palm, Lance feels the creases in Keith’s forehead easing. Lance bends over him more, leans his weight into the hand holding Keith’s head down, digs his fingers underneath the lever bar.

It moves. One final pull and it’s loose. But it’s not off. Lance yells in frustration, slips the strap out of the buckle. With shaky hands, Lance tears through the last few adjusters and rips the two metal halves of the muzzle apart.

Keith’s face is slack. Lance’s heart sinks. _No…_

It only takes a second for Keith’s brain to register that the pressure is gone from his jaw. With a horrid gagging noise, Keith hauls in a gasp. Lance holds him as his body twists and convulses, a hand on Keith’s shoulder and the other sandwiched between his head and the ground.

“Breathe,” he says as calmly as he can manage. “You’re going to be okay. You can breathe now.”

Keith straining for air against the panic and the coughs that rack his body is one of the most painful things Lance has ever had to witness. But he reminds himself that this is evidence that Keith is still alive. As long as he can get him back to the Castle, he should be fine. _Hopefully._

He takes his hand off Keith’s shoulder, intending to free Keith’s wrists from the cuffs, but his hand flies to his side instead.

Lance swivels, bayard aimed at the foot soldier and fires.

The foot soldier doesn’t have time to blast them. He ducks, mutters something in Galran and launches himself at Lance. Lance brings up his shield and rams it into the soldier’s stomach. The soldier grunts, staggering sideways. Lance recognises the way he transfers his weight and uses the momentum to push himself back in Keith’s direction.

_Nah-uh. You ain’t having him._

It becomes a tango. There’s not a lot of room to manoeuvre between Keith, the soldier and the wall, but there is no way Lance is letting Keith get taken. It’s a mistake, though. He gets so caught up in successfully fending off the soldier and trying to get a decent hit in that he forgets about the Commander.

Until he hears the powering up of a higher-powered blaster.

Lance shoves the soldier to the side, throws a horrified glance over his shoulder to see the Commander with a clear shot at Keith’s head.

She pulls the trigger.

The blast meets luxite.

Lance turns back to the soldier as Kolivan sweeps into the room. Another blast rings off the luxite blade. Lance feints left, ducks right. A few steps behind him, Keith groans. The soldier is in front of Lance when the gunshot rochets off Kolivan’s blade. The soldier drops to the floor, stunned. Kolivan deflects yet another blast and then brings the hilt of his sword to the Commander’s jaw.

 “Get his blade,” Kolivan orders. “We’re getting out of here.”

Without hesitation, Kolivan turns and cuts through the cuffs on Keith’s wrists. The Blade leader hauls him upright and Keith staggers against him, blinking hard. Lance fetches Keith’s knife and races out of the Command Centre after them.

They all run hard, but Keith’s clearly not at his best. His speed is half of what it usually is and Lance catches up to him in seconds. Kolivan doesn’t wait around for them, sprinting ahead with his longer stride, but Lance isn’t leaving Keith behind. Kolivan’s reached the first turn in their way out of the base when the alarms start blaring.

Keith cries out and stumbles sideways, crashing into Lance. He’s got his head in his hands, eyes squeezed shut against the flashing red lights, shoulders hunched. Lance wonders if he’s hit his head at some point, but right now their main concern in getting out of the base. Alive, all three of them.

“Come on, Keith,” Lance yells above the noise. “Just a little further.”

He hands over the Blade of Marmora knife, which Keith sheathes behind him. Then Lance slings Keith’s right arm over his shoulders and tugs him back into a run. A jog, morelike. It’s awkward, but their pace speeds up, so Lance dismisses his bayard and hooks his left arm around Keith’s waist, pulling him along.

“Just a little further! You’re doing great, buddy.”

Kolivan goes ahead of them and clears the path. Keith isn’t saying anything, his eyes wide and bloodshot and his legs unsteady. He’s hyperventilating, but all Lance can do is encourage him to keep going, to just focus on breathing and putting one foot in front of the other.

They get cut off from the hangar. The doors are slammed shut and Kolivan isn’t able to Galra-handprint his way past the controls. It’s not long before sentries and foot soldiers are converging on them from two different corridors. Lance swears, pulls Keith behind him and brings up as shield even as Kolivan charges at them.

Lance summons his bayard, grimacing. If he wants to help Kolivan take these guys down, he has to drop the shield, leaving Keith exposed. Keith’s in no condition to fight, so right now it’s just

There’s a woosh of air and Keith lets out a yell. A Lion roars.

Lance’s heart plummets. Keeping the shield up, he turns, expecting to see Keith inevitably dead. Instead, he sees Keith stumbling through a gap into the hangar, his lengthened luxite blade wedged between the doors.

“Kolivan!” Lance shouts.

The Blade leader picks up a felled sentry and tosses it into the crowd, then he’s sprinting for the gap. Lance follows him through and helps Keith yank the blade free of the door. Indents spring into the metal of the doors as blaster fire hits them from the other side. Halfway across the hangar, Keith’s knees buckle. Lance catches him and has barely got them moving forwards again before the hangar doors break open behind them.

Kolivan swerves from side to side, making it harder to land a hit on him. Lance knows he and Keith have no chance at that kind of evasive action. He pulls Keith closer to him and brings up his shield, tries to keep them both moving. They can’t outrun these guys. Maybe Lance could, but there’s no way he’s leaving Keith. No way. 

_Is there really no way to save Keith? Is this something that I have to just accept, that no matter how hard I try, Keith’s death on this day is inevitable and there’s nothing I can do to change that?_

The Lion’s roar sounds again. It rumbles much closer to the base than it should’ve, considering how far away Lance left Red. It has a different timbre to it, too, and it takes a moment for Lance to realise that it isn’t the Red Lion roaring.

It’s Green.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go... :)  
> (Edit: make that two.)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I started writing this story, I had no idea I'd end up writing so much. Ideas I thought could be covered in a page turned into entire chapters, so here we are and I'm not finished yet. 
> 
> Thank you all for reading this far, for your awesome comments and kudos! This was intended to be the last chapter, but this technically is only half of the last chapter, so...like I say, I'm not done yet. Anyways, as much as this heavy angst story allows it - enjoy!! :)

Green’s head crashes into the hangar. Bits of ceiling crumble with the shockwaves of Green’s roar. Lance pulls Keith down into a crouch, shielding him between his paladin shield and himself. He glances over his shoulder and is met by a fist connecting with his cheek.

It’s Pidge. Furious, worried-to-death Pidge. Oh. _Oh._

 _She’s_ the one who’s been doing the roaring.

“Lance!” Pidge screeches. “Turn your freakin’ comms on!”

Lance rubs his face, cringing. He shifts so that he’s not bending over Keith so much. “Alright, I deserved that.”

“Yeah, you did.” Pidge brings up her shield as the sentries start shooting in their direction. “Give us a proper warning next time, will you?”

“Yep. I’ll make sure to do that next time.”

She mutters something, words indistinguishable under the blaster fire. “How’s Keith?”

Lance half-expects Keith to let out a hiss of annoyance, saying that he can answer for himself. But the guy hasn’t uncurled from when Lance dragged him down under the cover of his shield, and he hasn’t so much as uttered a sound since then, either. Only by the rapid rise and fall of his chest does Lance know he’s still conscious.

“Not doing so good,” Lance answers. He’s about to elaborate then cuts himself short.

The sentries are running at them again. Foot soldiers, too, and _quiznak_ – the Commander’s back on her feet. He notices a shadow high up on the stacked containers on the other side of the hangar, moving fast. It sweeps along the wall, launches itself down to the hangar floor and then Kolivan’s tackling the Commander from behind.

Lance desperately wants to assist, but using his bayard means dropping his shield, and that’s currently not an option. He considers sending Pidge in to help, but decides against it. Pidge’s bayard isn’t suited for crowds, especially crowds where allies are present. She could do close range, but there’s too many sentries and soldiers to deal with on her own. The reason why she’s still standing next to him and Keith is probably because she’s made that analysis already.

Someone needs to help Kolivan, though…

“Pidge,” Lance says. “Take Keith back to your Lion. I’ll cover you from behind.”

A couple of sentries get too close. Pidge uses her bayard to slice through their electrical components, then slings the sentry arm that got caught on the grappling hook at a foot soldier coming in close. She clenches her teeth, looking like she’s on the verge of arguing a different tactic, then brings up her shield and ducks into a crouch, her back facing them.

Lance wraps his non-shield arm around Keith’s chest, hugs him tight and lifts him up and forwards the best he can. Pidge shuffles backwards. She grabs Keith’s arms and tugs him further over herself, his head dropping over her left shoulder. Lance flashes a worried glance in Kolivan’s direction. He turns his attention back on Pidge as she’s preparing herself for the ‘sprint’, hands bringing Keith’s legs around in front of her.

“I’ve got you covered,” Lance says, then steps between them and the gunfire. “Go!”

Pidge drops her shield, _roars_ with effort of pushing herself and Keith out of the crouch and charges for her Lion.

Concern spikes in Lance’s stomach. Keith’s practically limp, draped over her back like…like he’s already…

_No. This timeline’s different. It has to be._

There’s only about twenty metres to the Green Lion, but with a half-conscious Keith to carry, and with someone as small as Pidge carrying him, it’s painstakingly slow. Lance follows them, jogging backwards with only so much as a glance over his shoulder every now and then to gauge the distance, as well as make sure he doesn’t trip over anything. Thanks to Kolivan, they only have to contend with less than half the sentries and soldiers that were converging on them earlier. Kolivan seems to be handling it alright, but he’s fighting a lot of Galra on his own and Lance isn’t going to let him take that many on by himself.

As soon as Pidge vanishes inside the Green Lion with Keith, Lance switches to bayard. In a matter of seconds Green’s jaw shuts and Lance has felled a couple of sentries, but it’s a decent amount of time before Green moves to withdraw her head from the hangar. Even as he runs for cover, Lance can’t help but worry about Keith’s state of health.

_This timeline will be different._

Distracted, he forgets to slow down. Reaching the metal boxes stacked on the side of the hangar, Lance is behind them for only a heartbeat before he’s exposed on the other side of the stack. Inwardly cursing, he lunges and quickly springs backward into safety. He lets the grin crawl onto his face, having successfully remembered _not_ to put his heel down.

An idea comes to mind. Assessing the rest of the stacks, he takes a breath and runs for them. The sentries don’t stop shooting until Lance has shot them, but by the time he’s pulled himself up onto a vantage point half-way up the wall of stacked boxes, there’s not too many more of them to worry about. For him, at least.

Kolivan’s having trouble with the Commander. It doesn’t help that he’s outnumbered eight to one in sentries alone, not to mention the two foot soldiers lingering behind the Commander with blasters in hand. Kolivan moves quickly, but it’s clear that such intense close combat is wearing him out. He may be the Blade of Marmora’s leader, but he’s still got his own limits.

Keith’s already reached his. Lance isn’t going to let Kolivan get to the same point if he can help it.

Switching between bayard and shield, Lance takes down the sentries one by one. He almost wishes he had a sword – it would’ve made things a whole lot quicker. But that’s not his forte; his sniper is. It’s a lot less messy than a sword and a whole lot more effective for him. Avoiding hitting Kolivan is the only thing that’s got him on edge. He’s almost tempted to turn on the comms and ask him to stop being such a ninja for a few ticks so he can get a few shots in.

 _Oh, right…comms._ Lance grimaces. It’ll be full of screeching, no doubt. About him, about whatever’s going on outside the base, about Keith…

Maybe it’s best to leave turning on the comms until after Kolivan’s clear. If hears that Keith’s gotten worse, he’s not going to be able to focus on the mission at hand and it’ll be Kolivan paying the price.

Lance has taken out seven of the sentries before the foot soldiers start blasting in his direction. He takes out the eighth, switches his bayard to stun and deals to the soldiers. It occurs to Lance then that Kolivan’s taking an awful long time to get away from the Commander. Then he sees the dark patch of material on the fabric that marks him as Blade leader. He’s injured. Judging by the grin on the Commander’s face, Kolivan’s tiring fast and won’t be long before she gets him with another blast.

 _Not if I can help it,_ Lance thinks, squinting down the sight of his sniper. He takes a deep breath to steady himself. He could hit Kolivan if he’s even a centimetre off. This is risky, and he’d rather use stun, but this is the best shot he’s got at allowing Kolivan enough time to get out of the Commander’s range. It’s all about instincts here –

He fires.

The Commander’s yell rings throughout the hangar. It blends with the blaring of the alarms inside the base. She’s on the ground only a few seconds later, clutching her arm and curled in over the kick Kolivan landed to her stomach.

“I’ll meet you back at the Castle!” Kolivan shouts as he runs past Lance. He doesn’t stop on his way out of the hangar to make sure his words were heard.

Lance doesn’t hesitate in following him. As he scrambles down from the wall of boxes, he double-checks that the Commander is still down and then gaps it for outside.

On his way out he can’t resist thinking to himself with a grin on his face, _that’s why we bring our sharpshooter_.

 

 

Pidge collects Lance a hundred metres from the base. He’s waving his arms about like he’s standing at the end of some airport runway and Pidge feels the frustration brewing again. _If he’d just turn his freaking comms on…!_

“Shiro,” she says as Green’s mouth opens to let him in. “I’ve got Lance.”

Shiro’s voice comes from the Castle line. “Good. Hunk’s making sure Kolivan gets back to his ship alright, so come straight back to the Castle.”

“Roger that.”

Pidge frowns. It takes her a moment to register what she finds so…off. _Keith…not once did Shiro ask after Keith._ It dawns on her that he probably isn’t yet aware of Keith’s condition. Lance did kind of just took off without explaining anything though, leaving everyone to just _assume_ that Red had alerted him to some kind of danger that Keith was in. No doubt Shiro will be voicing his disapproval sooner or later.

 _And I do_ not _want to be around when that happens._

The cockpit doors slide open. Pidge peers around the side of her pilot’s seat as Lance drops to his knees beside Keith.

“Hey, man,” he says softly. “How’re you doing?”

Keith cracks his eyes open. He’s lying on his side now, emergency blanket wrapped around him and too tired to shift himself back upright. He mumbles something incoherent and lets out a weak cough.

Lance hums in concern. “Just hold out a little longer, ‘kay?” He pulls the blanket further over Keith’s shoulders. “We’ve just got to get you back to the Castle. Coran will check you out, make sure you’re alright and then you can rest.”

With a groan, Keith closes his eyes again. “…jus’ wan’ sleep.”

Lance exchanges a worried glance with Pidge. “Not long now,” he reassures. “Pidge is going to get us back to the Castle now, okay? Apparently Hunk took out the base’s ion cannon, so it’ll be a quick flight back.”

 _Yep, so_ now _he turns the comms on._

“You might want to hold him,” Pidge warns, turning back around in her seat. “I think he has a concussion – don’t want it getting worse.”

She waits until Lance gives the ‘all goods’ before sending Green into flight. At the back of the cockpit, Keith moans and Lance murmurs something in response. Pidge tightens her grip on the control levers.

_‘Have you ever…if you knew something bad was going to happen, like something really, really bad, what would you do to try to stop it? Like, “somebody’s gonna die if we don’t do anything about it” kinda bad…’_

Lance knew this was going to happen, didn’t he? It wasn’t something Red told him. It wasn’t some mere speculation, either. It was almost like he’d had a vision or something, got himself stuck in a time loop and was trying to the crisis incident from happening.

_‘Like, “somebody’s gonna die if we don’t do anything about it” kinda bad…’_

Pidge grimaces. “Answer me honestly, Lance,” she says. “You can call me dumb if I’m wrong, but you knew this was going to happen, didn’t you? Back on Olkarion…?”

Her question is met with silence and that’s enough to give her the answer she wants.

“I don’t want to know details if it is, since butterfly effect and whatnot, but is this a time loop of some sort that you’re stuck in?”

More silence. The tension settling into the air is unsettling.

“How many?”

Lance’s voice comes as barely a whisper. “How many what?”

“How many timelines?”

He doesn’t reply to her at first, instead changing in tone to urge Keith to stay awake. The words are too low for Pidge to hear, even with the comms, but they’re enough to quieten Keith’s protests at being kept awake. A minute passes before he gives Pidge an answer.

“This is the third.”

Pidge bites her lip. _‘Somebody’s gonna die,’_ huh? It doesn’t take much for her to guess who.

“Hey, Pidge?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for getting us out of there. I really thought I was going to have to…that he was going to…”

Pidge hears the sob overtaking him before it cuts him off.

Keith seems to stir at the noise. “’re you crying?”

“Yes, you stupid Mullet!” Lance sniffs. “I am. You got a problem with that? Hey – _no._ No drifting off on me. _Keith._ Hey!”

“…m’ head hurts.”

“That’s exactly why you need to stay awake for me. We don’t know how badly you’re hurt and we need you to stay awake so that you can help us know how to help you.”

“Hang in there, Keith,” Pidge calls out as she brings Green into her hangar. She’s aware of Red slipping into Green’s hangar close behind her. She wonders what that’s about, then realises that the other Lion’s presence must be helping keep her previous paladin holding on. “We’re in the Castle now.”

Once landed, she immediately gets out of her seat. Lance is sitting cross-legged in the corner, one foot extended to prevent Keith from moving around too much. Keith’s leaning against him with Lance’s arms holding him securely to his chest.

“We’re here,” Pidge announces again. Even at the mention of the Caste, Keith doesn’t seem to have the energy to move. Brushing the hair to the side and pressing a palm against his forehead, it isn’t hard to tell why. “C’mon,” she murmurs. “Let’s get you to the med-bay.”

“Do you think you can stand?” Lance asks.

Keith opens his eyes a second then squeezes them shut again. “Still dizzy…”

“Alright, then I’ll carry you there. That okay?”

“Mmrgh.”

Pidge takes a hold of Keith’s shoulders and draws him back to lean on her while Lance picks himself up from the corner. The cockpit doors are open now, Green’s head lowered to the hangar floor. Pidge rubs her hand up and down Keith’s arm in reassurance.

_Almost there…_

Lance ducks into a crouch and together they manoeuvre Keith so that he’s draped over Lance’s back. Pidge adjusts the emergency blanket over Keith again, tucking it under his arms to prevent it from falling off. Lance hoists him into a piggy back, one a lot less strained than Pidge’s from fifteen minutes ago. Pidge helps him to his feet.

“Aaand off we go,” Lance says, walking out of the cockpit and slowly down the ramp.

Keith doesn’t say anything, but his arm twitches in a feeble effort to hold on better. In the end he just gives up, too exhausted to do anything but let Lance take his weight. Pidge keeps an eye on him as they head off to the medbay.

If anything, she’s glad she specifically asked the others _not_ to meet them in the hangar. Judging by the way Keith is right now, the last he needs is to be overwhelmed with crowds and noises and questions. He’s probably end up zoning them out automatically, which would end up putting him to sleep. Not ideal. Not yet, anyways.

Ten minutes later, Lance is visibly sweating and Keith’s fallen asleep. Pidge is relieved to find Coran all set up and waiting for them. Between the two of them, they ease Keith off Lance’s back and onto a bed. Pidge can’t help noticing now how pale Keith is, though it’s probably made worse by the lighting of the room and the contrast Keith’s dark hair and Blade of Marmora suit make to his skin tone.

Lance stretches his back with a groan. “He’s out cold, Coran. I’m worried.”

The scanner in Coran’s hands beeps. The Altean man holds the panel above Keith’s head and waits. It’s clear that he’s just as worried, only it doesn’t show on his face until the scanner beeps again and the results are displayed on the screen.

“Coran?” Pidge asks nervously.

“He does indeed have a concussion, just as you suspected, Number Five.” Coran pauses, eyes flicking over the text. “It’s not a major, though. I’d say it’s safe to let him sleep. Safer than what it would cost him to stay awake for too long, at any rate.”

Lance crosses his arms in front of him, brow creased. “…what does that mean?”

“Well, what it means is that…”

Pidge hides her shaking hands in clenched fists. “Coran?”

“This fever may compromise him. I’ve never seen this level of fatigue before. On its own I suppose that wouldn’t be too much of an issue, but when you combine everything at once, the concussion, the fever, the fatigue, the high levels of adrenaline and what appears to be asphyxiation…”

“Can’t we put him in a pod?” Pidge asks.

“I have considered that. I’m afraid the risks associated with the healing pods’ side effects may only make his chances of recovering worse. It can heal the minor head injury, but it won’t take away the fever. The induced exhaustion brought on from pod recovery would quite possibly make it worse.”

Lance’s eyes are wide and unfocused, the colour drained from his face. “It’s the fever, isn’t it? The fever’s what’s going to kill him…”

“Now, now, no one said anything about him _dying…_ ”

“No, Coran,” Pidge grits out. “You don’t understand.”

“Understand what?”

Lance takes in the sight of Keith lying still on the bed, presses a hand to his mouth and hurries out of the medbay. Pidge’s stomach churns. Hot tears of her own threaten to spill over.

“I don’t even understand it myself,” she murmurs. “B-but Lance…he does.”  

_‘…if you knew something bad was going to happen, like something really, really bad, what would you do to try to stop it?’_

Pidge steadies herself with her clenched fists on the bed. She bends over, hiding her face in the emergency blanket with her forehead pressed against Keith’s arm. She sinks down to her knees, reaches out and grasps Keith’s feverishly warm hand, fingers curling around his. He doesn’t so much as twitch.

If Keith dies, she’s not going to remember this in the next timeline (presuming, of course, if there _is_ a next timeline). Lance will, but she won’t. She can already see how much that’s cost Lance to watch Keith die over and over again, and she’s not having it. Her plea is not so much a prayer but a cry for help to whoever might be listening.

_What can I do? Is there anything I can do to stop this from happening?_


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out this final chapter was a little trickier to finish writing than I'd though :P I'd intended to finish this earlier this week but ended up studying heaps of legislation stuff - by the time I decided to call it quits for studying and switch to a bit of creative writing, my brain had already decided it had had enough English (laughs). 
> 
> Anyways! Final chapter! (And one week remaining until Season 7!!!!) :D  
> Thank you so much, everyone, for reading this far and for you amazing comments and kudos!!!!! <3 <3 <3

He’s fighting to hold himself together, just until he’s in his room. He needs time to process everything, to think. To recollect himself. Unfortunately, he crosses paths with Shiro on his way up from Black’s hangar.

“Not now, Shiro,” Lance mumbles. “Save the lecturing for later.”

Shiro blocks his path, making him stop. “I wanted to say, it’s great that you were able to connect with your Lion. But taking off without a word like that…that’s dangerous. Not just for you – for the entire team. If we don’t know what you’re heading into, how are we supposed to help?”

“Like I said before,” Lance mutters, “there wasn’t time.”

Shiro frowns. “Yeah, there was. You still had time to tell the team where you were going – ”

“Keith.”

“ – and what you were doing. You got – ”

“Saving Keith.”

“ – into a perilous situation down there at the base. That could’ve been prevented if you’d filled us in.”

Lance’s patience snaps. “On what? ‘Oh, never mind. Keith’s dead already. Turn around guys. Sorry to waste your time.’”

“ _Hey._ ” Shiro’s expression is stern, eyes narrowed in disapproval.

Lance can’t believe what he’s hearing. “Do you not care anymore?”

“About what?”

“About _Keith!_ He was dying back there – hell, he’s dying _now_ – and not _once_ have you said his name. We’re about to lose a teammate and all you care about is mission reflections. The Shiro I know would be freaking out right about now, as he should be. Are you even in the least bit worried?”

Shiro’s voice is tight. “Of course I am.”

The lack of _concern_ for Keith in his gaze is downright disturbing. Maybe Lance is just too upset to notice it. Maybe Shiro just doesn’t realise the full picture and never will, since he’s not the one stuck in the time loop. It still upsets Lance greatly, though, and it takes all of his self-control not to lash out.

Allura finds them having a stare down and asks Shiro what’s the matter. Shiro ignores her. The burn in Lance’s eyes intensifies. Pidge shows up, too, storming down the hallway. Only she’s not interested in the argument – she’s on a different mission.

“You’re coming with me,” she says, wordlessly grabbing Lance’s arm and dragging him with her.

They leave behind the Shiro’s glare and Allura’s confusion. Lance obliges, quite content to be aware from that drama. His mind’s a mess of emotions already as it is. Having a staring war and a verbal fight with Shiro isn’t going to help anything.

A minute later, Pidge stands with Lance in her room. It’s closer than his own, the closest means to privacy. As soon as the doors shut behind them and the quiet of the room envelops him, Lance completely falls apart.

“Lance?”

His chest hurts more than it ever has. The ache is worse. It clutches at his sides with sharp claws, wraps itself around his throat, constricting. It’s worse than when he’s homesick and wondering if his family thinking that he’s dead because Keith _is_ dead, twice over, and this is going to be the third time. What’s more is that it turns out there’s nothing he can do, _nothing he can do_ , no matter how hard he tries to change things…

“Lance.”

He hiccups, tries to draw in a deep enough breath to still himself. It’s ineffective; he’s _breaking_ , torn apart at the seams. He wishes Pidge would hug him. Lance desperately wants a hug. Needs it, but Pidge simply stands where she is, waiting.

“Hey,” she says again, softer now. “He’s not gone yet.”

Lance laughs bitterly. “ _Yet._ ”

“Exactly. Not yet, meaning there is still time to save him.”

“Yeah? And how’re we gonna do that?”

Pidge regards him carefully. “I want you think. Do you remember how the time loop started?”

Without the sleeves of his jacket to wipe his face with, Lance resorts to slipping both gloves off and using the heels of his hands. Pidge waits, though not what Lance would consider patiently. But she waits nonetheless, giving him time to swallow the tears and compose himself to some degree.

“It was on Olkarion…” he begins, then hesitates. Pidge is glaring at him, eyes flashing in warning. _Oh right, ‘no details’._ He tries again. “We formed Voltron…only we formed Voltron with our minds as well. We all concentrated on the connection between us and then…”

“It’s okay, Lance. Be vague about it.”

Lance frowns, struggling to remember. He’d never woken up from the mindscape, had he? One by one the paladins had appeared… they’d called for Shiro, who’d tried to tell him something but vanished before Lance could hear him properly. The next thing he knew… he was waking up in bed.

_Oh._ He hadn’t even considered there to be any kind of time jump or anything.

He tells Pidge the latter half, skipping the part about Shiro. Lance concludes that he must’ve entered the time loop while in Voltron’s mindscape, and Pidge’s face lights up.

“It’s like an alternate reality!” She draws in a sharp breath. “The Lions – they’re made from an inter-reality comet, right? It makes perfect sense that Voltron would be capable of sending you back in time.”

“But this is the third… _reality_ I’ve come through, Pidge. The first time I went back in time – you know, during the Voltron mind-meld thing – was a few _months_ after Keith died.”

“And the second?”

“After Keith died the second time. Immediately after I found him.”

Pidge frowns in thought. “So no exiting that reality in the repeat of the Voltron mind-meld?”

_Exiting the time loop?_ The thought had never really crossed Lance’s mind. He’s presumed that the time loop would stop only once he’d successfully saved Keith. If there was a way to escape the repeating of time, would he take it? Sit back and accept Keith’s death, wait until the Voltron mind-meld happened on Olkarion and let slide the opportunity to go back in time and save him? The real question in that was whether or not he was willing to give up on Keith.

His answer is no. Not when he’s been given the chance to do something about it.

“It sounds like the only way you’re able to enter another timeline is after Keith dies,” Pidge says. She pauses a moment to wince at how matter-of-factly her words came out. “That means that we can assume that the only way to stop time looping is either you give up or we save Keith’s life.”

Lance swallows. “And what if this is the last time? What if there is no more repeats?”

“He’s not dead yet. We still have time.”

“That’s what I told myself last time…he didn’t make it.”

Pidge steps into his personal space, eyes glinting. Her message is clear: _I’m not giving up. You’d better not be._

“ _If_ he doesn’t make it,” she says, voice low, “are you going to leave it at that or are you going to be brave and try again? I know it’s scary. I would hate to be in your position. But every time loop you go through gives you a better idea on what you can do to fix this.”

The challenge sends adrenaline flowing through his body. Lance remembers with devastating clarity what it was like to find Keith dead in that cell, the thrill of being able to spend more time with the guy and learn from him.

“I’m not giving up on him, Pidge,” Lance whispers. “But I have no idea how…what we can do to help him. He’s at war with his own body. He’s…”

He’s at war with himself.

Right now the enemy is Keith himself.

Lance’s eyes widen. “Pidge.” He starts, makes for the door. “Mind-meld. We need to do a mind-meld.”

Once out the door, he sprints. Pidge is right behind him.  She gets it. He knows she does. Even when the team was disjointed, Keith never gave up on them. Right now, they’re determined not to give up on him but if he gives up on himself…

They burst into the medbay. Their thoughts are horrendously loud compared to the oppressive quiet of the room. Coran’s at the far end of the room preparing some kind of medicine, but his face is strained. Shiro’s nowhere to be seen, and Keith…

Keith’s gone a shade whiter since Lance left the medbay ten minutes ago.

Lance feels the colour drain from his own face. He tucks his gloves into his belt, crosses over to Keith’s bedside. Pidge marches past him and launches into their request mind-meld headsets. Thankfully, Coran catches on fairly quickly and hurries into a side-room to fetch them. He comes back with a pair. Pidge asks for another. Coran’s face screws up. Tears form in his eyes even as he fetches the third headset and hands it over.

Numbly, Lance accepts one from Pidge. Coran gently brushes Keith’s damp hair off his face and sets the headset in place. After checking Lance and Pidge have theirs on correctly, he pulls out a handkerchief and retreats back a few steps to blow his nose.

“Good luck, paladins,” Coran says quietly, voice choked.

Lance takes a deep breath and kneels down beside the bed. Pidge hops up on the bed to kneel on Keith’s other side. Pidge lays her left hand over Keith’s left hand and interlocks their fingers. She brings their hands up to Keith’s chest, over Keith’s heart. Lance lays the palm of his left hand over Keith’s sweaty forehead, pinkie finger resting on the headset, and grasps his right hand in his own. Pidge’s right hand disappears in Keith’s dark hair as she gives his head extra support.

With one firm look at each other, Lance and Pidge close their eyes and focus their minds on Keith.

Lance is met with darkness. A flash of green and Pidge appears. Red

They see a small spark a few metres between them. It burns incredibly hot, but it’s sparking and spluttering, dying out as they watch. Red growls, a low rumble that fills Lance’s heart with fire. The spark flares, then returns to its dying out.

Through Red, Lance knows that that spark is Keith. Pidge catches on fairly quickly, too. Together they mentally approach the spark. It’s like it’s run out of fuel and the darkness is choking the rest of it out.

Lance gives it everything he’s got.

He reaches out to the spark and pours out his spirit into the light he radiates. His own fire. Pidge chases back the oppressiveness of the air around them, making it easier to breathe, easier for the fire to burn. Lance fuels the fire with his own.

At first it seems to work, but the fire keeps on spluttering. Red roars.

Then Green roars too.

And Yellow. And Blue. And finally, Black.

Hunk appears in the mindscape. His very presence heightens the heat of the flames.

Then Shiro appears, and Allura. Black comes in like a rushing wind, stirring up the fire. Allura strengthens it, sustains it, gives it life. The fire flickers. A hazy image fades in and out.

Lance’s heartbeat quickens. “ _Keith!”_

Everyone starts calling his name. Over and over. They will not let this spark die out.

The transparent figure glows brighter and brighter, the spark becoming a flame, becoming a fire, becoming Keith.

Then a resolve sharp as a knife cuts through the residing oppressiveness, and the darkness of the mindscape vanishes in an explosion of light and white-hot flame.

There’s no darkness, no oppression, but it’s…colourless.

Then nothing.

 

Someone calls his name.

Lance stirs, heart pounding. The room is silent. He can feel the others’ presences around him, filling up the space in the room. No one speaks. No one moves.

He did everything he could. He tried. How?

There’s an indescribable hollowness inside of him. He could’ve done better.

“Lance.”

Movement in the room. Lance ignores it. The shuffling behind him turns out to be people leaving. The slight draft the medbay door creates on opening and shutting is enough to tell him that.

_Probably giving me space to grieve._

A weak chuckle. Keith’s fingers twitch.

“I’m no’ dead.”

Lance goes still. _That voice…_ Pidge lets out a soft laugh as his eyes fly open.

“Keith!” he exclaims. “Y-you’re not dead?!”

Keith stares at him with bleary eyes. “Would you rather I was?”

Lance takes his left hand off Keith’s forehead, frowning. _Déjà vu_ much. “No. That’s not funny. Don’t even joke about that.”

The grimace that’s probably meant to be a smirk leaves Keith’s face. He looks away.

“Sorry,” he murmurs. “You’re right. I shouldn’t joke about tha – _!_ ” A bout of coughing interrupts him, but Keith recovers from it quickly. “Urgh. Stupid cold.”

Pidge, who apparently removed herself from the bed before Lance woke up from the mind-meld, hands Keith a glass of water. She helps him sit up to drink it, and it’s only then that Lance realises he’s still holding Keith’s hand. Blushing furiously, he releases it and tears his gaze away.

Pidge snorts. “Gone a bit red there, Lance. Something the matter?”

“No,” Lance says hastily. “Nothing at all.”

Keith nearly chokes on the water. A grin is plastered on his face for a few seconds before he abruptly turns his head away from Lance and Pidge, more coughing taking over.

“You’re not remembering a bonding moment, by any chance?” Keith asks hoarsely. “Thought you didn’t remember it.”

Lance gets to his feet in a huff. “ _Pfft._ You’re thinking too much. Must be the fever.”

“Whatever,” he mutters, then finishes off the water.

Pidge helps Keith lie back down. She sets the empty glass aside. Keith forgets about teasing Lance,  hands coming up to his head. His fingers brush against the headset and his brow creases.

“This one of those…those, uh…mind-meld things?”

Lance nods. “Yep.”

It occurs to him then that he, Keith and Pidge are the only ones still wearing the headsets. Everyone else has already left, presumably leaving theirs with Coran.

_Speaking of which, where_ is _Coran?_

Keith exhales and closes his eyes. “So that wasn’t a dream.”

“Nope. That was real.” Lance hesitates before tentatively asking, “How’re you feeling compared to before?”

Keith grunts. “A little more alive.” He hides his face in the crook of his arm as he coughs again. “Still feel like...urgh, I don’t know what.”

“How’s your head?” Pidge asks. “Also, do you mind if I take that off for you?”

“That’d be great, thanks. And, uh, still hurts…pretty bad.”

As Pidge removes Keith’s headset, Lance reminds himself that although Keith _sounds_ ten times better, his physical state isn’t. It’s good to know that the concussion isn’t bad, but the fever still is and Keith needs rest. All this talking’s got to be wearing him out fast.

Sure enough, it only takes a one-minute lull in the conversation before Keith’s dropping back off to sleep again, albeit a lot safer this time. Then Coran returns and the new presence in the room besides Lance and Pidge has Keith wide-eyed and tense.

“Oh, still here, you two?” Coran remarks. “Good to see you awake, Number Four.”

He’s carrying something that looks like a diver’s oxygen tank with something attached to it. It appears to be a standard oxygen mask, but being Altean, it could very well be something entirely different.

Keith inhales sharply. “What is _that?_ ”

“No need to get yourself all worked up there, Keith. It’s just an oxygen mask – help you breathe easier.”

Coran takes a step too close, too soon. Keith scrambles to get away, eyes wide and still bloodshot from earlier. If Pidge weren’t standing behind him, he’d have fallen off the bed. As it is, though, the second he finds himself trapped between Coran and Pidge, Keith loses it.

Keith screams. “Get away… _get away from me!”_

Oh no. Too late Lance realises that no one else but him and Kolivan know about the muzzle.

“Coran, wait!”

Frantic, Keith lashes out at the Altean and shoves him back. Pidge, fortunately, stays where she is and doesn’t try to obstruct Keith as he twists himself so that his legs are over the edge of the bed. Lance rushes to crouch in front of him before he ends up straining his body too much.

“Keith,” Lance says sharply. “Hey. _Hey._ Look at me? That’s it, look at me. You’re safe.” He grabs Keith by the forearms, steading him. “You’re okay. It’s okay. Just breathe.”

He’s breathing too fast. Maybe if they’d had Keith changed out of his Blade uniform he’d be able to relax his guard a little. But then he’d be defenceless, without armour, without his knife…actually, he already is without his knife since they’d left it in the Red Lion.

_No wonder he’s freaked out. It’s like a repeat of what happened to him at the base._

Lance tries again. “Keith, Coran’s just trying to make it easier for you to breathe, okay? He’s not going to hurt you. It’s just oxygen. It’s just oxygen. You can breathe.”

He takes the mask from Coran and places it Keith’s hands. Keith flinches but holds it nonetheless.

“It’s just oxygen,” he repeats gently. “You can breathe.”

Slowly, Lance guides Keith’s hands up to his face. When the mask touches his nose, his arms jerk in panic and he violently tries to shove it away. Tries to shove Lance away. Lance keeps at it, though, keeps on encouraging him until, after what is a painstakingly long time, Keith has the mask pressed lightly against his face. He’s shaking terribly, his breaths coming in terrified gasps as though he can’t quite believe the mask isn’t suffocating him.

Lance rises from his crouch and sits down beside Keith. He lets go of Keith’s hands, trusting him not to let go of the oxygen mask, and moves to wrap an arm around his shoulders. Lance rubs a hand up and down Keith’s arm, rhythmically, keeping a few beats slower than Keith’s rapid breathing and gradually slowing. Keith’s gasps ease into shaky breathes. He’s shivering and looking like he might pass out if he doesn’t lie down soon, but it’s something.

“There you are. You can breathe. Just breathe, okay?”

Keith closes his eyes and nods. He doesn’t comment, just focuses on steadying himself.

While Keith’s calming himself down, Pidge silently excuses herself. Coran quietly mentions to Lance that there’s medicine on the benchtop for Keith’s cold when he’s ready for it. Lance acknowledges him with a small nod and Coran slips out of the medbay after Pidge.

“I’m sorry,” Keith whispers.

He slumps against Lance, lowers the mask so that it rests in his lap. Lance is on the verge of insisting Keith lie down and keep breathing through the mask, then he notices how utterly defeated Keith looks. This isn’t just a ‘thank you’ kind of sorry – it’s a legitimate apology.

“You don’t need to be sorry about anything,” Lance murmurs, brow creased. “You’re not blaming yourself for getting caught, are you?”

Keith doesn’t reply. That’s as good an answer as any. But it’s not the full answer.

“Did the Commander of that base say something to you?”

No answer. Keith ducks his head.

“She did, didn’t she?” Lance lets out a sigh. “Look, whatever she said isn’t true. She was probably just saying that to mess with you.”

Keith answers so quickly that Lance flinches. “No, she’s right, Lance. I’m a failure. I’m on an infiltration mission with an undercover organisation and I get caught – how is that _not_ a compete fail? What would have happened if they’d taken me to headquarters, huh? Interrogated me? Used some kind of mind-meld on me?”

“That didn’t happen.”

_Besides, you would’ve died before the ship left the hangar,_ Lance bites back. But he can’t voice that to Keith without explaining how he _knows_ that, so he keeps quiet.

“My _failure_ would’ve cost almost everything that Voltron and the Blades and the Rebel Alliance have been working towards. Everything. Now tell me how that doesn’t make me a failure?”

_Gosh, Keith. Now’s not the time to be stressing yourself out over your mistakes. You should be resting._ Usually, Keith’s anger would’ve made Lance snappy himself. This time it doesn’t, because it _hurts._ It hurts that all this anger isn’t directed at Lance at all, but at _himself._ Keith is angry at himself. It hurts because Lance knows what self-blame feels like.

“You have a cold,” Lance says slowly, “and I’m guessing that at the time you left for your mission, you were feeling alright, right?”

Keith nods.

“Yeah, exactly. You couldn’t have known.”

“It’s still my fault I got caught. They heard me coughing.”

“Keith, it’s not. You said it yourself. You felt fine before you left on the mission.”

“Yeah, but…”

“No ‘buts’. Sure, maybe going on a mission when you’re sick isn’t a good idea, but I get it. It’s a war. What choice do we have? It’s not as if we can send a transmission to Zarkon and be all like, ‘Ah, sorry, dude. Today’s not a good day for me. Can we maybe have the fight tomorrow instead?’”

Keith chuckles at that.

Lance smiles before continuing in non-Zarkon-imitation voice. “You’re just taking on too much at once, that’s all. And that’s not all your fault, either – we’re partly to blame for it, too. We haven’t been supporting you as much as we should’ve been. We’re sorry. _I’m_ sorry.”

Keith risks a glance at Lance. He sniffs, raises his head. “Still shouldn’t have gone on that mission.”

“Keith, you’re human. You couldn’t have known.” Lance’s mouth quirks at the pointed look Keith gives him. “Alright, _part_ human, but that’s not my point and you know it.

“You’re allowed to make mistakes, you know. I know this is war. I know that this isn’t the time nor place to be messing up, but these things are going to happen. It’s inevitable. But you can’t doubt yourself now. All you can do is try to make it right.”

“And how am I supposed to do that? Go back in time and not cough so loudly? What’s done is done.”

“Yeah, what happened on the base is. But you taking some time to rest certainly isn’t.”

Keith narrows his eyes. “I don’t have time to rest. People are dying out there.”

Lance finally lets his frustration get the better of him. He’s tempted to pull away from Keith to prove a point, but then thinks better of it. That could make him think he’s being rejected.

“Yeah, and unless you take a few days off to regain your strength, more people are going to die out there… including you.”

“You have a Black paladin again. Even Allura said that the Blades can go on without me.”

Lance wonders when and who told Keith about Black accepting Shiro again. Then he remembers that Keith came out of the mind-meld earlier than he did, so he probably saw Shiro in his paladin armour.

“Yeah,” Lance says tightly, “we can go on, but’s not a pleasant reality. I’d rather not go through that reality.” He doesn’t add ‘again’ to that sentence, though he thinks it. “And I know we do a terrible job at showing it, but we really like you, Keith. You’re more than just a teammate. You’re a friend. We can go on without you, yeah, sure, whatever. But that doesn’t mean we want to. Besides, there’s stuff in this war that only you can do.”

Keith snorts. “Says the guy who came to me concerned about six Lions and five paladins…” He frowns, realising he’s stumbling over his words. “ _Five_ Lions and _six_ paladins.”

“Alright.” Lance laughs. “You got me. But you heard what I was saying, right?”

“Yeah. My head hurts, but I _can_ hear you.”

“Right. So you’re my friend. And friends take care of each other. So as your _friend_ , I’m ordering you to lie down and rest. Close your eyes and count some sheep.”

Keith grunts. He lets Lance ease him down onto his back. Realising how self-conscious it must be lying there, uncovered and in armour (which he should really change out of, but hey), Lance goes into the side-room to fetch Keith a blanket.

“And hey, man,” Lance says, laying the blanket out over him. “Look. While you were on your mission, Black finally accepted Shiro back; he can fly Black again and we can form Voltron. Now, don’t get me wrong – your position as team leader isn’t gone out the window. Just what I’m saying is, if…if you want to go ahead and be a full-time ninja, do it. If you feel in your heart that you want to keep doing work with the Blade and you want to be available to them 24/7, then don’t hold back. But it’s entirely up to you, man. No pressure. We’ll be here whichever option you choose.”

“Thanks…” he whispers. “I’ll think about it.”

 Now that he’s lying down, Keith’s drifting off again. Lance gently pries the oxygen mask from Keith’s fingers and sets it over his face again. Keith’s eyes flicker open, but realising it’s just Lance, he lets himself relax. In a few minutes, he’s dropped off to sleep.

From deep inside himself, Lance lets out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.

 

 ---

After two full days of rest and sleeping off the worst of the fever, Keith’s back on his feet. Lance keeps a close eye on him, as does Kolivan. Before the fourth day is over, Keith leaves the Castle of Lions with Kolivan to go back to the Blade of Marmora headquarters.

In the following few days, Lance’s memory begins to fail him. He forgets about the Voltron mind-meld on Olkarion. He forgets about meeting Sam Holt and testing the waters of an alliance with Lotor. He forgets about Naxzela.

Both he and Pidge clearly remember their discussions about the time loop thing, though. It’s not something they talk about much and it’s not something Lance can think about in detail anymore. In the end, the conclusion they come to is that the time loop of alternate realities is over.

The timeline they're in now is the timeline that’ll keep on going, the one that they’ll keep on living in.

The one where Keith lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh!!! My heart is so full of emotion after writing this story!! Back in high school, my best friend went through a real rough patch, in and out of hospital, and there were a few months where I was so scared I was going to lose her. The desperation I felt to be there for her somehow, even if it was sitting with her in relatively awkward silence while we watched whatever was on the hospital TV....I guess I channeled a lot of that into Lance's desperation in regards to saving Keith. 
> 
> If there's something kind you can do for someone, even if it's something as seemingly small as a smile or a 'good morning' - kindness goes a long way, no matter how insignificant it may seem <3 <3


End file.
